However, the frontal attack on the project by General Wolseley was not a factor to be discounted by any means. Rallying to it in typical fashion, Sir Edward Watkin attempted to stifle the spread of patriotic fears about the tunnel by giving more large lunches at the Lord Warden Hotel at Dover, and he tried to keep all prospects bright by inviting more and more prominent people down into the tunnel at Shakespeare Cliff to marvel at the workings and to refresh themselves with champagne under the electric lights. By mid-February, his guests in the tunnel included no less than sixty Members of Parliament whose support he hoped to obtain for his pending Tunnel Bill, and on one occasion he even succeeded in having the Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone himself, come down into the tunnel and be shown around. Sir Edward assured his stockholders that what he called "alarmist views" concerning the construction of the tunnel were without any real foundation. Addressing an extraordinary general meeting of the Submarine Continental Railway Company, Sir Edward quoted from an alleged reaction of Count von Moltke on the matter: "The invasion of England through the proposed tunnel I consider impossible. You might as well talk of invading her through that door"—pointing to the entrance to his library. Sir Edward brushed the arguments of military men aside as a collection of "hobgoblin arguments" by "men who would prefer to see England remain an island for ever, forgetting that steam had abolished islands, just as telegraphy had abolished isolated thought." He insisted that the tunnel promoters were engaged in a project at once idealistic and practical, and bravely declared their motto to be identical to that of the South-Eastern Railway Company—"Onwards."