City and the Channel Tunnel
City and the Channel Tunnel is an article published in The Times on 27 february 1914.
The article reports a public meeting in support of the Channel Tunnel, where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle backed the scheme after considering the naval and military objections, agreeing that invasion through the tunnel was impossible and arguing that the real wartime danger lay in submarines threatening Britain’s overseas food supplies.
City and the Channel Tunnel
MILITARY FEARS SCOUTED.
THE FINANCIAL PROSPECTS.
A public meeting in support of the scheme for the construction of a submarine railway between England and Franco was held yesterday at the Cannon-street Hotel. The gathering was arranged by the House of Commons Channel Tunnel Committee, of which Mr. Arthur Fell, M.P., is the chairman, and the following resolution was unanimously carried:—
That we support the proposal to construct a tunnel under the Channel, to link up the railways of the United Kingdom with those of France and the Continent. Wo consider that such a tunnel will increase the cordial relations which exist between this country and France and the other Continental Powers; that it will greatly benefit the commerce of this country in time of peace by providing through communication with the Continent for both passengers and goods; that it will be of assistance to this country in time of war by providing, in certain circumstances, further means of obtaining supplies of food; and that, as all the strategetic requirements of the War Office for its defence and closing are to be met by those who construct the tunnel, we see no reason why this great work should not be allowed to proceed without further delay.
THE CHAIRMAN'S SPEECH.
Mr. FELL, who presided, read a number of letters from gentlemen who were unable to be present. The Duke of Argyll wrote:— "I believe the tunnel could be destroyed, with any troops in it or near it, and am glad that attention to the science side of the question is to be now given, for the "Tight Little Island sentiment can be proved to remain untouched." Lord Sydenham wrote: The military objections will not stand any careful examination." Others who wrote supporting the proposal were Mr. Arnold Morley, Lord Percy, Lord Glantawe, Mr. Williams (deputy-chairman of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company), Mr. Marconi, Mr. Joynson-Hicks, M.P., and Mr. Will Crooks, M.P.
Proceeding, the Chairman said the House of Commons Committee now represented a hundred members of all parties, and the members of the parties represented on the committee very nearly corresponded with the strength of parties in the House. The tunnel would help our relations with France, and to suggest we should ever have a war with France was unspeakable at the present time. Engineers who were capable of making such a great work as was proposed would be perfectly capable of making such arrangements as would be efficient for closing the tunnel in case of need. The meeting was an open one, and he hoped it would fairly test the opinion of the City on a subject which affected not only London, but the whole of the country. (Cheers.)
Mr. HAMAR GREENWOOD said they had two great railway systems on either side of the Channel in favour of the tunnel; they had the best engineers of France and England agreed that it was the only feasible scheme, and they had the most respected financial men on either side prepared to finance it. The old arguments of 1815 no longer applied. The only opposition came from certain military men, who would persist in looking upon the tunnel as a hole in the ground from which would inevitably flow thousands of soldiers from some Power at war with us. The House of Commons Committee looked upon it as the future terminus of the railroads not only of Europe, but of Africa and Asia. They wanted to make all railroads run to London, as in the days of old all roads led to Rome. (Cheers.) He concluded by moving the resolution given above.
SIR W. BULL said 30 years ago he was an opponent of the Channel Tunnel; but he was now a convert to it. He was not committed to any particular scheme. He should like to see the tunnel carried a considerable distance inland at each end. He suggested that pipes might be run through the tunnel for bringing a supply of oil fuel to this country.
Mr. J. ALLEN BAKER said the tunnel would mean to this country not only greater traffic and there-fore greater prosperity, but increased friendship with all the great nations of Europe, and therefore greater security for peace. (Cheers.)
Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR spoke in the same sense.
THE DANGER OF SUBMARINES.
SIR A. CONAN DOYLE said he had given some attention to the naval and military arguments against the scheme, and he agreed that invasion by means of the tunnel was impossible. The position of a body of troops inside the tunnel would be strategically as good as that of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea. (Laughter.) There were possibilities in future war that rendered it a matter of vital national importance that the tunnel should be constructed without delay. The danger was that we were getting five-sixths of our food supplies from abroad and submarine raft were developing remarkable qualities which were not generally realized. They were able to avoid a blockade squadron, and to pass under a patrol line of torpedo-boats without their existence being even suspected. If they were sent to the line of our commerce and told to sink a ship, they would torpedo that ship for a certainty. What would be the condition of our food supplies if there were 25 hostile submarines off the Kent coast and 25 in the Irish Channel (Cheers.) The price of food would reach an almost prohibitive figure. The Military Correspondent of The Times was a great opponent of the Channel Tunnel and was always running it down and mocking at it. But the other day he wrote an article on the Mediterranean, and, forgetting the Channel Tunnel, he said, "We must remember that more than half the food supply of this country now comes from the Mediterranean." If it came through the Mediterranean it reached Marseilles, and if it got to Marseilles and wo had the Channel Tunnel it was only a matter of management to get it through to London. (Cheers.)
LORD ROTHERHAM thought that those who opposed the scheme were imposing a handicap on British trade, and Mr. SELFRIDGE also supported the scheme from the commercial standpoint.
GENERAL SIR ALFRED TURNER thought the question was mainly commercial and economic, and a military one in only a very small degree. It was an insult to the intelligence and capacity of our military authorities to suppose that they were unable to prepare themselves for a task which had been faced by the French, Italian, and Swiss military authorities. It had been held by the late Lord Wolseley that the great danger was that a body of Frenchmen night come over here and hold the head of the tunnel. To pass an army corps through a tunnel, according to one of the greatest of French engineers, would require between 140 and 150 trains, 7.000 carriages and trucks, and 140 or 150 steam engines. It would fake on the other side, even supposing there were long platforms, 121 days to disembark one army corps. What would the English be doing while that was going on unless they were paralysed by fear, imbecility, and sleeping-sickness? (Laughter.) The tunnel would proceed for two miles on our shore after it left the bed of the sea, and at any point there it might be temporarily destroyed. They might make portcullises, they might stop the ventilation at any time and everybody would be asphyxiated. Then there was electricity: by pouring a current of 1,000 volts into the tunnel every motor could be destroyed and the tunnel rendered perfectly useless. Finally, there would be a battery at the end, which, supposing the enemy attempted to walk out, could blow them all to pieces. (Laughter and cheers.)
SIR FRANCIS FOX explained the engineering aspects of the scheme, and suggested the possibility of a half-hourly service from London to Paris.
THE FINANCIAL ASPECT.
BARON D'ERLANGER (Chairman of the Channel Tunnel Company) said the £16,000,000 spent on the tunnel over a period of six years by the two richest nations in the world would constitute a productive enterprise for all time. He had been taken to task for his reticence about the goods traffic which would accine to the tunnel. It is not due to the fact that no estimates had been made, but solely to the difficulty of placing before an audience such dry facts in a palatable form. Out of the total tonnage of 13,987,000 tons from and to France, 5.9 per cent. only was retained for the tunnel; from the Belgian transit traffic of 5,194,523 tons, 1.60 per cent. was retained, and from the Dutch, 0.63 per cent. This gave a total for the tunnel of 944,000 tons, estimated to yield £640,000 of receipts. The passenger traffic between England and the Continent for the year 1912 reached 1,800,000; and the yearly increase over the last three years was at the rate of 100,000, showing how increased facilities stimulated passenger traffic. At the present rate of increase the total number of passengers in 1920 — when they could hope to open the tunnel if begun to-day — would reach 2,400,000. They could not, even if extremely conservative, compute at less than 65 per cent. the percentage of passengers who would take the tunnel in preference to other routes. At 10s. per head 1,560,000 passengers would yield receipts amounting to £780,000; to which must be added:— For luggage, £78,000; for postal service (at least), £40,000; for goods traffic (say), £640,000 — total, £1,538,000. The cost of working a line which was only a connecting link between two great routes, and had only terminals, was very small; it would not exceed some 25 per cent, leaving some £1,200,000 profit on a capital of £16,000,000 maximum, or over 7 per cent. The resolution was then carried unanimously.
