IF ENGLAND WERE INVADED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 460, 3 June 1909, Page 2

IF ENGLAND WERE INVADED.

Mr Frederick Harrison gives a remarkable warning in a long letter to The Times. “The sole ground for serious anxiety as to our national defence arises,” he remarks, “ from what we see as we watch the feverish expansion of the German Navy, combined with the domineering attitude of the German Government in Europe—plus the ambitious schemes asserted now for a whole generation by the German naval and military chiefs, fomenting the natural aspirations of the great German race. If ever our Empire or our dominion of the seas is challenged, we now see that it will be by no desultory attack in distant waters, not in India, • South Africa, or Australia, but by direct plunge at the heart of the Empire—on our arsenals, our ports, and the capital. The German Navy is not built for distant voyages. It is built only to act as the spearhead of a magnh ficent army. This army, as we know, has been trained for sudden transmarine descent on a coast, and for this end every road, well, bridge and, smithy in the East of England and Scotland has been docketed in the German War Office. A catastrophe so appalling cannot be left to chance, even if the probabilities against it occurring were 50 to 1. But the odds are not 50 to 1. . . . The

continuous strain of maintaining a two-Power standard against nations far more populous, and increasing more rapidly, must in the long run break down. It seems that it is already broken down. How idle,” exclaims Mr Harrison, “are fine words about retrenchment, peace, and brotherhood, whilst we lie open to the risk of unutterable ruin, to a deadly fight for national existence, and to war in its most destructive and most cruel form !”