ENGLAND “INVADED.”

Hokitika Guardian, 2 June 1917, Page 1

ENGLAND “INVADED.”

General Imagination’s Great Coup. London, March 27. The time when General Imagination transported a quarter of a million Russian soldiers from Archangel to France via Great Britain seems very far oft in these days, but we have been reminded of it this week. Late on Saturday night a rumour got afloat concerning the recalling of soldiers on leave, and on Sunday there was evidence in many localities of “ a certain liveliness in connection with the National Guard. Mark the sequel. At eight o’clock on Monday morning I was solemnly assured that 14,000 Germans had landed on the Essex coast, and that there had been a big naval battle off the mouth of the Thames. An hour later I heard of landings of Germans at Margate, “ somewhere neac Dun-

wich in Suffolk,” at Lowestoft, Aberdeen, and half a dozen other east coast places, whilst ope dear old dame anxiously inquired whether I believed-it was true that 35,000 Germans had landed at Liverpool! . As regards the east coast points of invasion, the number of Germans landed varied .between 80,000 at Aberdeen and adjacent points on the Scotch coast, down to the Essex 14,000. In the aggregate—leaving out the Liverpool contingent-y-the Huns had contrived to land something like 150,000 troops in our beloved island during the dark hours of Sunday night and Monday morning,, and terrible things were going to happen. Of course, there was not a semblance of foundation in fact for any of the various invasion yarns one heard between breakfast and luncheon time, but the wild stories appear to have gained a wide, if brief, credence in thousands of British homes, and men who ought to • House of fuommons on Monday afternoon that there was- nothing in the stories seemed scarcely to satisfy them. In reply to a question on the subject, Mr Law said ;• ' “ I have heard a great many rumours of that kind, but I have not been able to find that there is any foundation for any of them. As far as I can gather, if it is possible, to state any source of origin for these rumours, they are due to the fact that our home defence forces were told to bo ready for an emergency. This often happens, but apparently in this case it created unusual commotion.” The question why this particular test among the periodic tests made to ascertain the readiness of our home defence forces to meet emergencies should have resulted in such a crop of invasion stories is hard to answer. Some people attribute the .invention and spread of the yarns to the brerman element still at large among us, but there is no need for the uninterned Huns to “get busy” oyer these things, for General Imagination has a vast army of Britishers who are only too ready to carry on any campaign of fiction. It was only las< -week that a tale concerning a revolution in Germany aud„the surrender of SO,OOO Germans on the • Western front ran over England like lightning and penetrated even into the Royal Courts of justice, reaching the Judges engaged in trying cases. There was nothing “ pro-German ” about that short-lived tale, the source of which remains a complete mystery. . It sprung up from nowhere in particular flew round the country at amazing speed Jor a few hours, and died as suddenly as it was born.

As regards the “great naval ba'tla off the mouth of the Thame?, it appears that the only ‘‘foundation” for tbo moidenfc is the great “invasion was that on Saturday people living in certain areas erst of London heard during the day a series of long continned deep rumbling noises for which they could not account. Someone suggested that the sirange noises were caused by distant big gun fire ; the idea was quickly seized upon, and when the invasion rumors began to get round the rumblings were speedily _ coupled therewith, and lo ! “a great naval battle,” The two things flurg together well, for nataraily the barmans would hava to distract our Navy’s attention whilst the invading forces were being tr*nsported and landed, and what better move could the German navy make than a big a!tack directed against the vital lines of oommmunioation which exist between the mouth of the Thames and FolksBtone on the one side and Nieuport and Boulogne and-the ctbpr side of the Straits of Dover? Strange to say, however, the “ big naval battle ” story