The Chairman, who on rising was received with prolonged hooting and a chorus, again and again renewed _con amore_ by the assembled audience, of "_And he's a jolly bad fellow!_" having, at length, though frequently interrupted, obtained something like a hearing, was understood to say, that he had little to offer in the shape of comment on the Report submitted to the meeting. (_Groans._) The causes of its unsatisfactory nature were patent to all. Owing to their having been compelled, in what he now fully recognised was a slavish and mistaken obedience to a popular clamour (_a Voice, "You're right!_"), three years ago, in the height of a sudden scare about invasion--("_Oh! oh!_")--to let the water in and flood the Tunnel--(_groans_)--they had been occupied ever since in pumping it out again, and though now he was glad to announce that the last bucketful had been emptied out, and that the traffic would be resumed forthwith--(_cheers_)--still the operation had cost them three millions of money, that they had to get from the market in the shape of Seventeen per Cent. First Preference Debentures--("_Oh! oh!_")--on which, however, he trusted that a favourable season's receipts might enable them possibly to pay a next half-year's dividend of three and sixpence. (_Prolonged groans._) It was not much; still, it was something. ("_Oh! oh!_") But if they wished to secure even this modest remuneration for their money, they must make up their minds, especially at the present moment, when there was a daily,--he might almost say, an hourly,--expectation of the withdrawal of their Ambassador from Paris, that there must be no more craven yielding to delusive impulses of an idiotic patriotism--(_loud cheers_),--in a word, no more talk about closing the Tunnel on the paltry plea of "national security." (_Prolonged cheering._) He was glad to hear those cheers. It was an endorsement of the standpoint that he and his Directors meant to take in the present crisis, which was, in effect, to remind themselves that they were shareholders of the Anglo-French Submarine Channel Tunnel Railway Company first--and Englishmen afterwards--(_thunders of applause, and loud and prolonged cheering_);--and that, if called upon to shed their life's blood, it would be solely in defence of that great engineering work, the true monument of peace, in which their aspirations, their hopes, and, above all, their capital, had been so fearlessly embarked and largely invested.(_Renewed enthusiasm._)