21. The objection that fortifications are becoming out of date, is so puerile as scarcely to deserve refutation. We know that, with the exception of such modifications as have been rendered necessary by improvements in arms and projectiles, the art of fortification has scarcely undergone a change for the better since the days of Marshal Vauban. But are we therefore to reject it until we have a better system? The percussion musket with which we re-armed all our foot soldiers a few years ago has been superseded by the Enfield rifle. The Armstrong gun is rapidly replacing the smooth-bored cannon on our forts and in our ships. And steam has rendered necessary the reconstruction of our navy. Yet we don’t leave our soldiers without rifles, our batteries without guns, or our fleet without steamers, because those we are now constructing may, (or rather will, most certainly) become out of date in a few years.
22. As we shall show hereafter, the cost of fortifying London could be no obstacle: it would be an insignificant premium for such an insurance.
23. Fortification is the art of all others that seems at the present moment fitted to supply our wants. It is the very complement of our volunteer movement. We boast of the talent and intelligence of our volunteer defenders; and shall we neglect the means of turning that talent to the best and most profitable account? If our volunteers, from their superior intelligence, would make the best riflemen, surely these very qualities fit them in a still higher degree for engineers.
24. Fortification seems as if it were specially contrived for the benefit of England and Englishmen; for it makes money to do the work of soldiers. We are the richest country in Europe, with the smallest body of men under arms. Fortification will render irregular troops as good as, nay, even better than, regular. Our regular army is but a handful of men compared with the armies of other great powers; but thanks to our Volunteers, we are rich in perhaps the finest irregular troops in the world. Fortification affords the best guarantee against a coup de main; and such a mode of attack is precisely that which we have most reason to apprehend. Fortification gives the means of gaining time at the commencement of a campaign; and this of itself is a godsend to the ever unready Saxon.
25. There is every reason why we should largely avail ourselves of a science which above all others distinguishes the educated from the uneducated soldier, the man of intellect from the mere fighting machine.
26. We have shown not only that there is no valid objection to fortifications, but that they are the best means of defence for us, and that our metropolis is the point of all others that seems to stand in need of defence: it is the heart without a breast-plate.
27. We now therefore proceed to the practical application of the argument. How should London be fortified?
28. In the minds of many may rise visions of an immense bulwark, a kind of great wall of China, drawn round London, and provided with ditches, drawbridges, and barred gates; and those who are acquainted with the customs of continental towns will probably connect them with barriers and octrois, and men examining your luggage and poking among your legs for contraband articles. On the contrary, now, thanks to our railways, our long-range guns, and to our volunteers, the fortifications which are necessary to secure London may be so unobtrusive, and so removed from the main highways, that no Londoner, save such as know what fortification really is, would ever realize the fact that they were in any way connected with its defence.
29. We only want half-a-dozen tolerably large forts, well placed, to form, as it were, the salient points of our defence. Let the reader refer to the diagram, and he will see six stars, one on Shooter’s Hill, one on Norwood Hill to the South of the Crystal Palace, one at or near Wimbledon, a fourth somewhere near Harrow, then at Mill Hill, and our last within good range of Enfield Lock. A set of dots (●) then come in about midway between the five spaces.