Our weak Navy, with its inefficient personnel, has now to perform an enormously increased duty, such as defending increased commerce, food, and coals. Our guns are the worst in the world in forty-seven vessels, mounting 350 muzzleloaders, where the French and all foreign Navies use only breechloaders. Dimensions, expense, and very many other reasons are given for this ruinous custom, but all other Navies mount breechloaders on vessels of the same dimensions as our own. As to expenses, such economy (so-called) means the most execrable parsimony—to ruthlessly murder men and disgrace our flag and Navy. Our forty-seven feeble vessels, weak in armament, and all composing them, reduce our Navy to comparative insignificance, and are a preparation for disgrace and ruin when at war.
Yet we are content to sit idly by, confident in a strength which two foreign Powers are slowly but surely undermining! Russia and France, both barely able to sustain their gigantic Armies, are to-day straining every nerve to enlarge their naval forces, preparatory to a swift descent upon our shores. This alarming fact we wilfully disregard, affecting to find humour in the Franco-Muscovite preparations. Thus, unless we maintain a Navy of sufficient strength to prevent invasion, War, with its attendant horrors, is inevitable, and the scene of battle will be England's smiling fields.
Turning to our Army, what do we find? Even the civilian writer who studies it is amazed at the muddle of insufficiency in which it is steeped. Our Home Defence Scheme is a very elaborate paper problem, but as our forces have never been mobilised, its many glaring defects must, alas! remain unremedied until our highways echo to the tramp of an enemy. Upon this point a volume might be written, but a few plain facts must suffice. Military experts will, I think, agree when I assert that the 2nd Corps, as planned by this grotesque scheme, does not and cannot exist; and while the 3rd Corps may possibly stand as regards infantry, because its infantry are all Militia, yet it will have neither Regular cavalry nor guns. Every one of the staffs is a myth, and the equipment and commissariat arrangements are a complete guarantee of collapse at the outset of mobilisation. What, for instance, can be said of a system in which one unit of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade "mobilises," and obtains its "personal" and part of its "regimental" equipment at Plymouth; the other part of its regimental paraphernalia, including munitions, at Aldershot; and its horses—at Dublin? Practically, half our cavalry at home are to-day, however, incapable of mobilisation, for, according to the latest return available, I find that over six thousand cavalry men have no horses! Again, the Volunteers, upon whom we must depend for the defence of London, have no transport, and the ammunition columns for the 3rd Army Corps and the Regular cavalry do not exist. Such staggering deficits as these are in themselves sufficient to show how critical would be our position if England were invaded, and in order to give an adequate idea of what we may expect during that reign of terror, I have penned the narrative which follows. Some, no doubt, believe that our enemies will treat us with more mercy than I have shown, but I firmly anticipate that in the desperate struggle for the supremacy of the world, towns will be bombarded and international law set at naught where our invaders see a chance of success. Consequently, the ruin must be widespread, and the loss of life enormous.
In the various strategical and tactical problems involved, I have received assistance from a number of well-known naval and military officers on the active list, whose names I am, however, not at liberty to divulge. Suffice it to say that, in addition to personally going over the whole of the ground where battles are fought, I have also obtained information from certain official documents not made public, and have endeavoured to bring this forecast up to date by introducing the latest inventions in guns, and showing the relative strength of Navies as they will appear in 1897. In this latter I have been compelled to bestow names upon many ships now building.
To Lieut. J. G. Stevens, 17th Middlesex Rifle Volunteers, who supplied me with many details regarding the Volunteers; to Mr. Alfred C. Harmsworth, F.R.G.S., whose suggestion prompted me to write this narrative; and to Mr. Harold Harmsworth, who on several occasions assisted me, I hereby acknowledge my thanks. While many readers will no doubt regard this book chiefly as an exciting piece of fiction, I trust that no small proportion will perceive the important lesson underlying it, for the French are laughing at us, the Russians presume to imitate us, and the Day of Reckoning is hourly advancing.
WILLIAM LE QUEUX.
Prince of Wales's Club,
Coventry Street, W.