ENGLAND'S DANGER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 80, 30 April 1909, Page 3

ENGLAND'S DANGER.

SOME OPINIONS. Lord Roberts, speaking in the Housj of Lords last November, said:— "A Home defence army is either required or is not required. If you come to the conclusion that it is not required, and that the navy cam do all thlat i'»' needed, I would ask you what can be the object of spending vast sums of money on Mr. Haldane's Territorial Army scheme'; But if a Home defence army is required—and the only purpose for which it can be required is to resist invasion, and that possibly without any previous notice—then surely common sense tells us that, it must be on a scale and so organised 'as to ensure it being able to deal successfully with any troops to -which is it likely to be opposed." Speaking at a meeting of the Primrose League some years ago, the late Lord •Salisbury said:— "We can have no security or confidence in the feelings or the sympathy of other nations; we can have no security except in the efficacy of our own defence and the strength of our own right arm.

Everywhere you sec the powers ol offence increasing. Armies become larger, navies are founded; railways, telegraphs—all the apparatus which science has placed at the disposal ot war become more perfect and more effective. And all these strange things may, by one of those strange currents that sweep across the ocean of international politics, lie united in one great wave, ami dash on your shores. "Depend upon it, if this should ever occur—and. that such an eventuality will happen I feel morally certain, unless we put our house in order—it will be at a intment when we are least prepared to meet the enemy; that is to say, when we are asleep as we are at present, or iwhen nearly the whole of the Regular •Artnv has been dispatched abroad, as in 1<J00\" '" It is incorrect to consider an invasion of England to be chimerical and inealisable. The distance is short and can easily be traversed by an enterprising admiral who succeeds, by the excellence of his ileet and by his audacity, in obtaining for a short time the command of the sea. Germany can meet the trial when it comes, and must not lose a single day in preparing for it."— General Von de'r Goltz, in the Deutsche Rundschau. 11100. "■Before the days of steam and of the electric telegraph, we should always have had a long time to prepare against any threatened invasion. Then it would have been necessary for the would-be invading enemy to collect not only the necessary army close to the most conveniently situated harbors beyond the Channel, but the vast number of training transports that would have been required for their conveyance across our big wet ditch, as well as the fighting fleet intended for their protection during the passage. "Other nations —I need not name them—arc now very strong at sea as well as ourselves, and any well-planned combination amongst them might, I believe, give to our enemies the command of the Channel for a sufficiently long time to enable a great invading army to be landed on our coast. The only stores it would require would be ammunition, as our rich countries would furnish them with every other requisite.

" I am well aware of how much I lay myself open to hostile criticism—aye, even to angry ridicule—when I humbly assert my belief in the possible invasion of England. But, as a military student, I prefer humbly to err with such very great soldiers as Napoleon and Wellington upon such a question than to agree with the politicians in office upon a matter that might be at no very distant date one of life and death to us as a nation."—Extract from a letter written Iby Field-Marshal Wolseley to Lord Wemyss, on the 28th November, 1900.