The whole question of the Channel Tunnel and its strategic effect, which is treated of in the last essay, becomes entirely academic, since even if it had been put in hand when the German menace became clearer it could not yet have been completed. The idea of an invasion through it has always seemed and still seems to me to be absurd, but we should have been brought face to face at the present moment with the possibility of the enemy getting hold of the farther end and destroying it, so as to wreck a great national enterprise. This is a danger which I admit that I had not foreseen. At the same time, when a tunnel is constructed, the end of it will no doubt be fortified in such a fashion that it could be held indefinitely against any power save France, which would have so large a stake in it herself that she could not destroy it. The whole operation of sending reinforcements and supplies to the scene of war at the present instant would be enormously simplified if a tunnel were in existence. There remains the fiercely debated question of compulsory national service. Even now, with the enemy at the gate, it seems to me to be as open as ever. Would we, under our constitution and with our methods of thought, have had such a magnificent response to Lord Kitchener's appeal, or would we have had such splendid political unanimity in carrying the war to a conclusion, if a large section of the people had started by feeling sore over an Act which caused themselves or their sons to serve whether they wished or not? Personally I do not believe that we should. I believe that the new volunteer armies now under training are of really wonderful material and fired with the very best spirit, and that they will be worth more than a larger force raised by methods which are alien to our customs. I said in my previous essay, "Experience has shown that under warlike excitement in a virile nation like ours the ranks soon fill up, and as the force becomes embodied from the outbreak of hostilities it would rapidly improve in quality." Already those Territorials who were so ignorantly and ungenerously criticised in times of peace are, after nearly three months of camp-life, hardening into soldiers who may safely be trusted in the field. Behind them the greater part of a million men are formed who will also become soldiers in a record time if a desperate earnestness can make them so. It is a glorious spectacle which makes a man thankful that he has been spared to see it. One is more hopeful of our Britain, and more proud of her, now that the German guns can be heard from her eastern shore, than ever in the long monotony of her undisturbed prosperity. Our grandchildren will thrill as they read of the days that we endure. * * * * * _Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.,_ _London and Aylesbury._ * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES