A Shareholder here rose, and said, that if there really was, as the Chairman seemed to imply, a probability that war with our friendly neighbours might break out at any minute, would it not be advisable, in the interests of the Company, to come to some amicable and therefore satisfactory commercial arrangement for the transit of troops through the Tunnel, which, no doubt, it would be their first object to secure.(_Laughter._) There might possibly be some stupid attempt of our own Government forces to seize upon and even damage, with a view to rendering the Tunnel useless, the works commanding this end of it. Should not a Volunteer Corps of Shareholders be at once organised--("_Hear! hear!_")--for the purpose of keeping them until the French Military Authorities came over in sufficient force to enable them to seize and securely hold them against all comers? He trusted he was not wanting in a well-balanced and legitimate patriotism--("_No! no!_")--but like their respected Chairman, he felt that there was a higher claim, a louder call than that addressed to an Englishman by his country, and that was the deep, grim, stern and stirring appeal made to the Seventeen per Cent. Debenture-holder by his Company.(_Roars of laughter._) Considerable uproar here arose over the ejection from the meeting of a protesting Shareholder, who injudiciously proposed an Amendment to the Report to the effect that, "In the face of grave National danger, the Company ought to be prepared, even if it involved serious financial loss, to close their Tunnel, if such a step should be regarded as necessary to the security of the country by the military advisers of the Government." This proposition was howled down, and the Chairman was again about to address the now somewhat quieted meeting, when a copy of an evening paper, announcing the declaration of war, and the simultaneous seizure of the British end of the Tunnel that morning by two hundred French troops, who had crossed from Boulogne by yesterday's evening Mail-boat, and had passed the night at Folkestone in disguise, was handed up on to the platform.