

The Channel Tunnel Scheme

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

The Channel Tunnel is a letter written by Arthur Conan Doyle published in The Glasgow Herald on 26 june 1916.

The Channel Tunnel Scheme

Sir, — Nations are supposed to pay for their sins, but they pay an even higher price for their stupidities. And we deserve to pay it, for we have been very stupid, and have allowed ourselves to be frightened off from doing what was clearly to our advantage by the most absurd bogies, such as that we would be invaded through a rabbit burrow in the ground 26 miles long. I do not think national folly could rise higher than that. From the time that war with Germany became more probable, after Agadir, I sent three separate minutes to the War Office, the Admiralty, and the Council of National Defence, pointing out how essential a tunnel was for our campaign. I foretold submarine danger, and showed how a tunnel would meet it. I pointed out that our line of communications would be safe in all weather, that the ships would be spared for other work, and the convoying warships released. Our present shortage of tonnage is partly due to this cause. I wonder how many tens of millions of pounds would have been saved if these views had met with a sympathetic consideration from any of the three bodies to which I sent them, always presuming that there was time to drive the tunnel through before war broke out. Now that it is clear that a whiff of poison gas down the tunnel would destroy any army within it, we will hope that all the absurd nightmares will die away, and that after the war we shall bring sanity to bear upon this question.


See also