best for everybody, in the great work of supplying the staff of life.
In the interval, the men may do much for themselves by cleanliness, prudence, and self-control. Pure and orderly habits of body and of life, a good home, and an attachment to it rather than to excitements elsewhere, are the best precaution against the worst evils of the baker’s craft, and the only remedy for such ills as have not yet been got rid of. Let us hope that some bakers of the existing generation—some, perhaps, whom we know—may live to make us such bread as at present without the present sacrifice of health and comfort. Their best friends are much mistaken if a baker of threescore years and ten will be a stranger spectacle to the next generation than a greyheaded clerk or wheelwright—those very durable members of Friendly Societies! When that happens, the image of men kneading for hours together in an underground hothouse will be regarded as a barbaric picture of the customs of the antique world.
OUR SECOND LINE OF DEFENCES.
NO. I.
Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o’er the mountain wave,
Her home is on the deep.
So sang Thomas Campbell, just at the close of the last century, when men’s minds were full of the achievements of Howe, and Jervis, and Duncan, and Nelson, and so singing he merely embodied the national sentiment and expounded the national faith. Nor has the sentiment been altered or the faith been shaken from his days down to ours. The descendants of the old Sea Kings show still—as ever—the quality of the blood which runs in their veins, as clearly and unmistakeably as their nearest continental neighbours exhibit in their strange admixture of fierceness and levity their mixed derivation from the Frank and the Gaul.
And in one sense it is as true now as it was then, that England’s true defence is her fleet. In 1805 the presence of our fleet in the Channel effectually prevented the execution of that vast project of invasion for which Napoleon I. only asked for eight-and-forty hours of clear Channel; nor in the teeth of such a Channel fleet as we could now muster is it likely that any other Napoleon would be disposed to attempt a similar manœuvre. But in some other respects the times are changed.
In the first place, steam has revolutionised naval warfare altogether. Things which were not possible for sailing ships are every-day affairs with steam vessels. There can be no more blockades. Concentration on a given point at a given time may now be made almost matter of certainty. Any accidental circumstance which might draw off or disperse, for however short a time, a Channel fleet, would readily be seized upon by even a moderately skilful adversary as an opportunity for throwing a force on our shores, and, when once there, the “roaring guns” would be powerless to “teach them” any sort of useful lesson.
The enormous improvement in our artillery since the days of the old 32’s and the 24-pounder carronades, and the “long 18’s,” furnishes another serious element in the calculation; in short, it is not that our Channel fleet has ceased to be the national defence of our shores, but that it has become the first line only of those defences, and that it has become necessary to throw up a second line inside.
Of natural fortifications, in the shape of cliffs and rocks, we have plenty; and it might occur to a few innocent folks that the simplest process might be to fill up all interstices between these with a good substantial wall like that of China. The practibility of such a scheme may be deduced from the single fact, that in the 750 miles of coast between the Humber and Penzance, there is an aggregate of no less than 300 on which a landing can be effected by an enemy. In short, to fortify the whole coast round is of course out of the question, and it has been wisely enough, therefore, determined to confine the present operations to the effectual protection of vital points.
The first of these are obviously our dockyards and arsenals. They supply the sinews of our first line of defence, for the efficiency of which it is essential that it should be supported by a line of places where damaged ships can be repaired, and new ones fitted out. Moreover, no one can doubt that any invading enemy possessed of the average amount of brains would make first for our dockyards, in order by their destruction to cripple our first line of defence, as well as endeavour to impair our naval prestige. That these are already provided with certain defences, which have grown up around them in the course of years, is as true as that the same sort of improvements which have rendered a second efficient line of defence essential, have at the same time impaired the efficiency of the existing materials for that line. Many of the old works have been condemned as “obsolete,” and “in a state of decay.” We have heard of a fort not a hundred miles from the mouth of the Thames, from the guns of which it has long been dangerous to fire even a salute. Add the fact that competent authority has decided that practicable range for bombardment cannot now be estimated at less than 8000 yards[1] (more than four and a half miles), and here are sufficient reasons at once for a general rearrangement of our second line. We will add two other vital points.
The dockyard, arsenal, manufactories, and depôt at Woolwich, the sole depositary throughout the country for some of our most important matériel, stand in some respects in an attitude of marked isolation from all other similar establishments, and present features which we have no need here to discuss, except to remark that they are utterly undefended by any system of fortification whatever.
The metropolis naturally claims some attention, too, of a peculiar nature. A successful rush upon it, with the enormous consequent commercial loss, has been shown to be one of the greatest national disasters that could by possibility occur.
The readiest highway to Woolwich, Deptford, and London, is of course the Thames, whilst a road to Chatham, our greatest naval establishment in the eastern part of the country, is furnished by the Medway.
- ↑ As these lines are passing through the press, there come news of experiments made with the Lynall Thomas gun, which is reported to have pitched a 170lb. shot 10,000 yards (nearly five miles and two-thirds).
