The British press, on the whole, reacted to the latest tunnel development in tolerant fashion. There was, however, a spirited discussion of the subject in an article in the _Daily Telegraph_ in the spring of 1957, marked by an attack on the whole scheme by Major-General Sir Edward Spears. General Spears wrote that although powerful interests now appeared to be backing the construction of a Channel tunnel, the objections raised to the project in the past were as valid as ever. "Such a tunnel would bind this island to the Continent irrevocably [and] would soon link our fate to that of our Continental neighbors," he asserted, and he added that if the new scheme were persisted in, steps should be taken to enlighten the public before the Government was committed to approving it. General Spears's position was supported by Lord Montgomery. Choosing Trafalgar Day as the most appropriate time to express himself on the subject, Lord Montgomery said at a Navy League luncheon in October of 1957, "There is talk these days of a Channel tunnel. Strategically it would weaken us. Why give up one of our greatest assets—our island home—and make things easier for our enemies? The Channel tunnel is a wildcat scheme and I am wholeheartedly opposed to it.... I hope that the Navy League will have nothing to do with it." However, by Trafalgar Day the pro-tunnelers were hard at it, too. In July 1957, the four main interests involved in the scheme—the English and French Channel-tunnel companies, the Suez Canal Company and Technical Studies—had combined to create an organization called the Channel Tunnel Study Group to contract for modern technical surveys of the whole tunnel question. The new group is said to have spent over a million dollars on having these surveys made. The studies included a very detailed survey of the Channel bed with modern electronic geophysical equipment and deep rock borings and sea-bottom samples made across the neck of the Channel, as well as microscopic examination of these rock samples to determine their microfossil composition and probable position in the strata from which they were taken. Curiously enough, while the geological survey was under way, somebody on the project took the trouble to inquire into the old French hydrographic surveys for a Channel tunnel, and after some diligent searching he turned up, in a dusty waiting room of a disused Paris suburban railroad station, where it had been stored for an age, a collection of thousands of the sea-bottom samples made in the French Channel-tunnel surveys of 1875 and 1876. All of the samples were found neatly packed away in test tubes and ticketed, and the searchers even uncovered a case of the geological specimens that Thomé de Gamond himself had recovered in 1855 by his naked plunges to the bottom of the Channel in the neighborhood of the Varne. The geologists weren't interested in going by way of the Varne any more, but many of the old 1875-76 samples were taken away for