In contrast to these manifold cries of alarm among the English, it seems never to have occurred to anybody in France at the time seriously to suggest that if a tunnel were to be constructed, a hostile English force, supported by an English navy in control of the Channel sea, might suddenly seize the French entrance by surprise and use it as a bridgehead for a general invasion of France. A few French commentators did, however, remind the anti-tunnel forces in England that while the English had set hostile foot on French soil some two or three times in as many centuries—not to mention her having kept physical control over the port of Calais for over two hundred years following the Battle of Crécy—English soil had remained untouched by France. Most of the French newspapers appeared to be unable to fathom the cause of the whole tunnel commotion, which was generally put down to English eccentricity. Several French journals, surveying all the fulminations on the other side of the Channel, even took an attitude toward the English of a certain detached sympathy. One of the more interesting French commentaries on the uproar in England appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. In this article, the author expressed some doubt that British military men who denounced the dangers of the tunnel were really convinced of the reality of those dangers. For them to do so, he suggested, one would have to presuppose, on one side of the Channel, a "France again a conqueror with, at her head, a man gifted with ... an incredible depth in crime; a secret, an almost incredible diligence in preparation as in execution," and, on the other side, "a governor of Dover who would be an idiot or a traitor, a War Minister who would not possess the brain of a bird, a Foreign Minister who would allow himself to be deceived in doltish fashion." How could the French possibly assemble perhaps a thousand railway carriages in England without arousing the suspicions of British Intelligence? How could the vanguard of the French invaders get through the tunnel with all their required ammunition, horses, and supplies, and get them all unloaded in a few minutes—would this vanguard sally forth without biscuits? The author found no solution to these particular problems. Instead, he devoted himself to the larger issue: