ENGLAND'S DANGER.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 106, 3 May 1909, Page 2

ENGLAND'S DANGER.

SOME OPINIONS.

Lord Roberts, speaking in the House of Lords last November, said:

"A Home defence army is either required or it is not required. If you come to the conclusion that it is not required, and that the navy can do all that is needed, I would ask you what can be the object of spending vast sums of money on Mr Haldane's Territorial Army scheme? But if a Home defence army is required—and the only purpose for which it can be required is to resist invasion, and that possibly without any previous notice —then surely common sense tells us that it must be on a, scale and so organised as to ensure it being able to deal successfully with any troops to which it is likely to be opposed." Speaking at a meeting of the Primrose League some years ago, the late Lord Salisbury said:— "We can have no security or confidence in the feelings or the sympathy of other nations ;iwe can have no security except in the efficacy of our own defence and the strength of our own right arm. "Everywhere you see the powers of offence increasing. Armies become larger, navies are founded; railways, telegraphs—all the apparatus which science has placed at the disposal of war becomes more perfect and more effective. And all these things may, by one of those strange currents that sweep across the ocean of international politics, be united in one great wave, and dash on your shores.

"Depend upon it, if this should ever occur—and that such an eventuality will happen. I feel morally certain, unless we put our house in order—it will be at a moment when we are least prepared to meet the enemy; that is to say, when we are asleep as we are at present, or when nearly the whole of the Regular Army has been despatched abroad, as in 1900."

"It is incorrect to consider an invasion_ of England to be chimerical and irr.ealisable. The distance is short and can easily^ be traversed by an enterprising admiral who succeeds, by the excellence of his fleet and by his audacity in obtaining for a short time the command of the sea. Germany can meet the trial when it comes, and must not lose a single day in preparing for it."—General Yon Der Goltz in the Deutsch Rundschau, 1900.

' 'Before the days of steam and of the electric telegraph, we should always have had a long time^ to prepare against any threatened invasion. Then it would have been necessary for the would-be invading enemy to collect not only the necessary army close to the most conveniently situated harbours beyond the Channel, but the vast number of sailing transports that would have been required' for their conveyance across our big wet ditch, as well as the fighting fleet intended for their protection during the passage. "Other nations —I need not name them—are now very strong at sea as well as ourselves, and any well-plan-ned combination amongst them might, I believe, give to our enemies the

command of the Channel for a sufficiently long time to*enable a great invading army to be landed on our coast. The only stores it would require would be ammunition, all our rich countries woulcl furnish them with every other requisite. "I am well aware of how much I lay myself open to hostile criticism— aye even to angry ridicule—when I humbly assert my belief in the possible invasion of England. But, as a military student, I prefer humbly to err with such very great soldiers as Napoleon and Wellington upon such a question than to agree with the politicians in office upon a matter that might be at no very distant date one of life and death to us as a nation." —Extract from a letter written by Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley to Lord Wemyss on the 28th November, 1906..