Dec. 5, Tue threat of an invasion of England, which after years somewhat academic discussion has become a question of quite practical polities during the past two months, would seem to have receded again into remoter regions with the German failure to burst a way through in Flanders. On the other hand, if that threat was ever to be taken seriously, and not merely as a scare ingeniously worked up by the German Press in order to keep Britain's armies at home, there is not much more reason for rejecting it now than six weeks ago. Writing at the end of October, and already able to see that the great offensive against Calais had failed, the military correspondent of The Times'' said "The only German arm which has not yet been employed is the Navy, and the Worse the outlook on land' the more probable is it that the German Navy will be called upon to act, and to cover if possible the delivery of a quarter of a million Germans on British soil. writer is not much impressed by the arguments which would make us suppose that because invasion la difficult it will not be attempted. selves in German have four or five million men in arma and unsuccessful, picture the cost of the war, the paralysis of German seaborne the growing unemployment, the increasing anxiety, and the utter" hopelessness of the outlook if German armies are driven back within German frontiers, For great evils great remedies, and with the new arms with which science has endowed navies there area dozen ways in which Germans might hope to land an army on our shores.""
Bismarck, if we remember rightly, put the number of ways at twenty, but could not see one of getting the army out again. The present generation of Germany's rulers, however, appears to flatter itself that it knows more than Bismarck: and if the grand idea of protecting half the Channel with big German howitzers and the rest of the way with the German fleet seems a little impracticable, another line of attack might be chosen. Tf the German fleet really comes out and tries to distract the British fleet's watchfulness, the flotilla containing the army of invasion need not necessarily be directed only at Dover and Flokestone. Why suppose that the Germans will attack only those points at which they are expected?
Admitting for the sake of argument that a German invasion is really a danger that has to be guarded against, how would it he met? One may pass over the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.