Henry Bathurst Hanna

“ The difference between passing an army into a contiguous State across a frontier often not wider than a mere geographical line, and "passing an army across the sea, in the teeth of a strong Navy's efforts to prevent it, is enormous," so he affirmed, adding that "The difficulties of work on the sea are not apparent to men whose work is done exclusively on shore, and so those difficulties are treated as non-existent." ”

“ There has, perhaps, never been a time when such a possibility has not been present to the minds of men responsible for England's safety; but, up to a recent date, France, not Germany, was the quarter from which invasion was looked for, and in the course of the last hundred years there have been several well-developed French scares. After the last of these, to which the Fashoda incident gave rise, the British Government of the day appointed a Royal Commission, presided over by the Duke of Norfolk, to inquire into the grounds on which the belief in England's vulnerability was based. ”

“ London, of course, will be its objective, for only by seizing the centre of Great Britain's life can it hope to paralyse British resistance; therefore, the nearer to London that landing place, the better. This conclusion points to the south coast of England, but the Straits of Dover bar the way, for whatever our despondent prophets may be pleased to predict, German naval authorities will never trust so implicitly to the carelessness and stupidity of ours, as to dare to send an enormous fleet of transports, escorted by all Germany's warships, through a passage only twenty-four miles wide. ”

“ Long before the last German soldier has set foot on land, one by one they will rise above the horizon, and the transports will find themselves in worse plight than had they been attacked in the open sea; for, caught between the British Fleets and the shore, they can no longer disperse in all directions. How many of these unhappy vessels will sink with troops and horses on board; how many suffer capture, or make good their escape, leaving troops and horses behind them on the beach; how many British ships will perish in destroying the German Fleet, it is impossible to predict ”

“ But something worse than the fear of unfriendly weather will overshadow the work of disembarkation, and spur to a haste which can only create confusion—that something, the certainty that the alarm has been given, and that every British battleship and cruiser, every British destroyer, torpedo boat, and submarine that wireless telegraphy can summon, is hurrying towards the east coast, and may, at any moment, come into sight. ”

“ Fortunately for the Germans and fortunately for ourselves, we shall never be called upon to deal with a stranded German army, for even the slight indications of the difficulties attendant on an oversea expedition on a vast scale that I have laid before my readers, prove that at no state of its development could it and its objective have been concealed from the knowledge of the whole world, and such knowledge is all that is needed to ensure its failure. ”

“ Holland owed her temporary triumph entirely to Great Britain's blunders, her final and permanent discomfiture to the latter country's natural strategic superiority; nothing therefore but a repetition of the same blunders on a magnified scale, under conditions which render them practically unthinkable, can assure to Germany so much as the chance of emerging victorious from a struggle with this country, for is not her strategical position worse than Holland's, her coast-line shorter, her harbourage more limited, her communications with the outer world longer and more open to attack ”

“ On the other hand, it is not pandering to the jingo spirit in my own countrymen to compel them to recognise their great naval strength, for the facts and arguments by which I have disproved the possibility of a German Invasion of England, demonstrate our weakness for attack, and the futility of cherishing the ambition of playing an active part on land In any future European war. ”

“ The main object of a fleet, whether employed in defence of commerce or in frustrating invasion, is to prevent the enemy's ships from getting to sea far enough to do mischief, and any disposition that is even moderately successful in attaining this object will practically be effective in preventing a large fleet of transports, than which nothing is more vulnerable and difficult to conceal, from reaching our shores. ”

“ It looks, therefore, as if Germany's plans for an invasion of England must be lying in a pigeon-hole with the word impracticable written large across it; but to help a timid and easily deceived British public to realise to the full the folly of its fears, we will assume that German naval officers have given their voice in favour of landing on a beach, and do our best to find one suitable to the purpose.
To accommodate 246,000 men, 78,000 horses, 864 guns, 13,200 vehicles, such a beach must be, at least, from 12 to 15 miles long ”

“ The Navy necessary to the maintenance of such a position would not necessarily be a menace to any other nation, and it is not demanding too much of Germany to ask her to recognise that, till the affairs of the world are managed on better principles than those prevailing at the present time, we cannot have the supremacy of the sea, on which the conditions of our national existence depend, wrested from us, nor allow it to slip from our hands. ”

“ True, the men who have found satisfaction in terrifying themselves and others with visions of 150,000 German soldiers landing on our coast one day, and marching on London the next, never have made any allowance for non-combatants, nor for carts and wagons, nor for horses to draw them; yet non-combatants and carts and wagons have to accompany every army, and, without them, it can neither march, nor fight, nor live. ”

“ Having dealt with the ships of the two Fleets under comparison, I come now to the crews, without whose hands, eyes, and intelligence to navigate the hulls, set and keep the machinery in motion, and load and fire the guns, the finest ship in the world is but so much dead matter, fit only for the scrap-heap [25] ; and here too Great Britain's numerical strength is far in excess of that of Germany or any other nation. ”

“ The preponderance in weight of the broadside fire of the British cruisers in the North Sea as compared with that of the German cruisers in the same sea is even more marked, as Great Britain has twenty-nine cruisers, thirteen of which are armoured, as against Germany's six, only one of which is armoured. ”

“ I therefore deprecate any policy based on the assumption that France will always be our friend and Germany always our foe, and I desire to see a return to that independent position in which all our arrangements can be based upon our own needs—safety for our island home, protection for our trade, and uninterrupted, uninterruptible communication with India and our Colonies. ”

“ Unfortunately, there are persons who do not think, but just pin their faith on the dicta of some man, to whom they attribute special knowledge or special foresight; it will, therefore, still be necessary to ascertain who to-day is playing the part of the blind leader of the blind, and then to array against his dicta the testimony of the large number of military and naval experts who differ from him, first, however, sweeping away a traditional error, which has contributed not a little to that sense of insecurity which it is my object to dispel. ”

“ Balfour's assurances would have long been accounted satisfactory, had France remained the object of British suspicion, it is impossible to say, for hardly had his reassuring words been spoken than a new direction was given to the nation's fears, and, in an incredibly short time, Germany—a country with which we had always been on good terms, and whose commercial prosperity is bound up with our own—was accepted as the national foe. ”

“ Not being a sailor, I shall not attempt to decide whether the three fleets will merge into one, protected by all Germany's cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo-boats, or whether each fleet will sail independently, escorted by its own quota of warships of every kind. ”

“ No armed millions can save her, no matter under what conditions they are raised and trained; nothing can save Great Britain but her Navy, and on that rests what may be called her credit-note, not only in Europe, but throughout the world. ”

“ Manchester Courier.— "The present volume ends at the moment of the advance, and we shall therefore look eagerly for the continuation of the story. If it is continued in the same exhaustive and judicial manner as it has commenced. Colonel Hanna will have made a notable and valuable contribution to modern Indian history,"
Investors' Review.— " Nothing is set down in it haphazard, nothing from mere impulse or passion. It is a calm and almost colourless . . . narrative of facts based upon documents accessible to all." ”

“ We, the British Isles, must keep ourselves free from entangling alliances in Europe, first, because they would involve us in the military rivalries of Continental Powers and deflect our policy from its normal course, and secondly because such alliances and their responsibilities would be an obstacle to closer Imperial Federation. ”

“ And because Free-Trade Britain has become the rendezvous of the world's shipping, the distributing centre of the world's wealth, she is strong in the self-interest of all other countries, for which among them can desire the dislocation or even temporary interruption of this inflow and outflow of the world's trade? ”

“ But even where lines are double, it is frequently advisable to move a portion of an army by road to leave the railway free for the conveyance of military supplies of all kinds, and to prevent a total suspension of its ordinary traffic, on which the existence of the civil population depends.
German railways are not specially adapted to the use of troops. Like those of our own country, they were constructed to meet the requirements of peace, not those of war, and by some even of the double lined, owing to certain defects, it is hardly possible to despatch more than one troop train per hour. ”

“ Every concession that I have made to bring an enemy's forces to our shore has been a denial of that enemy's foresight, knowledge and common sense—qualities in which the German people are not deficient. ”

“ Even if the Battleship Fleet is absent — which it ought not to be so long as invasion is within the bounds of possibility, and never will be, if those who are conducting the war know their business—yet it is unthinkable that a sufficient defending force of cruisers and torpedocraft should be absent at the same time. ”

“ Again I repeat—Nature has given to Great Britain a position which carries with it supremacy of the sea; and it is of no use for Germany to try to wrest that supremacy from her, because it is rooted in a natural advantage of which she cannot be deprived. It was Great Britain's position which enabled her to reduce Holland from a first-class to a third-class Power, without once landing an army on her shores, though the Dutch ships were as numerous, as well manned, and as well fought as the English ”

“ But the scaremongers, who have not allowed for non-combatants and vehicles to carry an Army's supplies, nor yet for the supplies themselves, are not likely to have considered such trifles as telegraphs and tools and hospital wagons. In their dark dreams the enemy is to live on the country, carry his commandeered food and forage in carts provided and horsed by the inhabitants, and either use our hospital wagons and hospitals, or have no sick and wounded to impede their triumphant advance, all the casualties being, presumably, on our side. ”

“ I emphasise this point because there are men who, in their desire to smooth the way before our German invaders, would have us believe that " they will not be hampered by over-much Artillery or Cavalry, arms difficult to employ in enclosed country," [20] and others who go yet farther, and assure us that they will come without horses, and may so confidently reckon on finding horses and provisions in England that, soon after landing, they will be as well horsed as our own Territorial Cavalry [21] —innocently ignorant of the fact that horses are needed to capture horses and unearth provisions. ”

“ Set in the heart of stormy seas, often difficult to navigate, often enshrouded in mist, the United Kingdom lies athwart the principal water-routes of the world, not only those which connect Europe with Canada, the United States, and the West Indies, but equally those which bring to the Northern European States the products of Africa, South America, India, China, Australia, and Japan ”

“ Four hundred and fifty-seven thousand one hundred and twelve tons would be required for an army consisting of:
And Furse remarks that the provision of suitable ships for the transport of this force would " tax all the energies of the Transport Department of the Admiralty."
But if there is no escape from the law that in reckoning sea transport one must calculate on a net basis, the only way in which Germany can provide herself with the tonnage she will require, is to seize all foreign vessels lying in her ports—all of them, of course, in the same state of unreadiness as her own. ”

“ There can be no flinging of men and horses on shore; slowly, laboriously, in carefully arranged order of precedence, the contents of the transports must be conveyed to the beach. The main body of Infantry first, to protect the landing of the horses, guns, wagons, stores, etc.—for now, at last, all hope of concealment has vanished, and every step will be taken as in the presence of an enemy, beginning with the position taken up by the troopships, which must lie well out of range of field Artillery, though every furlong farther off land will be a handicap. ”

“ Organise and work as the Germans may, they will find it hard to avoid a great accumulation of men, beasts, baggage, and stores in the ports, for until the fittings of a ship are completed—those fittings including fresh-water tanks in the holds rigged out with pumps [11] — no baggage must go on board, not only because its arrival causes inconvenience at the time, but because, unless the process of embarkation is carried through in an orderly, systematic way, the process of disembarkation will be attended with such confusion as may prove fatal to the expedition. ”

“ All experts agree that so long as her regular Army is at home, no foreign Power will venture to invade her, also that her Army will never be sent abroad till she has gained full command of the sea, i.e. till she is in a position to seal up' the harbours of any would-be invaders.
4. Only a surprise expedition could hope to reach her shores.
5. Neither Germany nor any other Power can take her by surprise, because the organisation of an oversea expedition on a large scale—and no other has a chance of success—is a lengthy and difficult business, involving action which could not be concealed ”