We should be constantly beginning expensive and elaborate schemes for strengthening the defences according to the fashionable idea of the day.... They would be about half carried out by the time the next panic occurred, and then they would be obsolete.... Now it would be elaborate fortifications at Dover itself; now a great chain of forts to hem it in from inland; now the old scheme of the fortification of London; now the establishment of forts out at sea over the tunnel.... Is it worth while to run the chance...? The most diverse arguments were advanced in the press against the construction of the tunnel. In the May issue of _The Nineteenth Century_, Major-General Sir E. Hamley raised the question of whether the French, invading Britain by train through the tunnel, might not seize some distinguished English people and carry the captives along on the engine as hostages, so that however thoroughly the officer in charge of the defensive apparatus at the English end were alerted to their presence, "still he might well be expected to pause if suddenly certified that he would be destroying, along with the enemy in the Tunnel, some highly important Englishmen." Another writer, referring to the responsibility and possibly also to the character of the officer in charge of the tunnel defenses, observed thoughtfully that "the commandant of Dover would carry the key of England in his pocket." Still another commentator wondered if responsibility for making a decision to blow up the tunnel might not be too much even for an English Prime Minister: The Premier might think himself justified in destroying twenty millions of property ... but also, he might not. He might be an undecided man, or a man expecting defeat by the Opposition, or a man paralyzed by the knowledge that the tunnel was full of innocent people whom his order would condemn to instant death, in a form which is at once most painful and most appalling to the imagination. They would all be drowned in darkness. The responsibility would be overwhelming for an individual, and a Cabinet, if dispersed, takes hours to bring together. In his article in _The Nineteenth Century_ Lord Bury, going under the assumption that a Prime Minister in a period of gravest national emergency would indeed be able to haul his Cabinet colleagues and military advisers together in reasonable time to consider having the tunnel blown up, asked his readers to conjure up the painful scene at Downing Street: