Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/battleofdorking00chesrich THE BATTLE OF DORKING With an Introduction by G. H. Powell [Illustration] London Grant Richards Ltd. MDCCCCXIV PREFACE The warnings and prophecies addressed to one generation must prove very ineffective if they are equally applicable to the next. But in the eloquent appeal published forty-three years ago, by General Chesney, with its vivid description and harrowing pathos, few readers will not recognize parallel features to those of our own situation in September, 1914. True the handicaps of the invasion of August, 1871, are heavily piled upon the losing combatant. Not only the eternal Anglo-Irish trouble (so easily mistaken by the foreigner for such a difference as might be found separating two other countries) but complications with America, as well as the common form seduction of the British fleet to the Dardanelles, a general unreadiness of all administrative departments, and a deep distrust of the “volunteer” movement, involve the whole drama in an atmosphere of profound pessimism. But there are scores of other details, counsels, and reflections (of which we will not spoil the reader’s enjoyment by anticipation) which, as the common saying is of history when it repeats itself, “might have been written yesterday.” The desperate condition of things is all the more remarkable as Englishmen had just witnessed the crushing defeat of their great ally--supposed to be the first military power of Europe--by the enemy they are supposed to despise. The story is otherwise simple enough. The secret annexation of Holland and Denmark is disclosed. People said we might have kept out of the trouble. But an impulsive nation egged on the Government who, confident that our old luck would pull us through, at once declare war. The fleet, trying to close with the enemy, is destroyed in “a few minutes” by the “deadly engines” left behind by the evasive enemy; our amateurish armies are defeated on our own soil, and _voilà tout_. Remarkable must have been the national insouciance, or despondent the eye which viewed it, to explain the impassioned actuality of such a _reveillematin_. For one thing it may be remarked that _The Battle of Dorking_,[A] though in a sense the “history” of the pamphlet is already “ancient,” is really the first of its kind. The topic, then of such inspiring freshness, has since become well worn. _Mutatis mutandis_, doubtless, much of General Chesney’s advice and warning might have been repeated on the occasion of the Boer War. If that were not a practical “alarum to the patriotic Briton,” we ask ourselves what could be so called. Perhaps it combined the maximum of alarm with the minimum of national risk, but its beneficent influence can scarcely be questioned.