anticipation) which, as the common saying is of history when it repeats itself, “might have been written yesterday.” The[Pg vi] desperate condition of things is all the more remarkable as Englishmen had just witnessed the crushing defeat of their great ally—supposed to be the first military power of Europe—by the enemy they are supposed to despise. The story is otherwise simple enough. The secret annexation of Holland and Denmark is disclosed. People said we might have kept out of the trouble. But an impulsive nation egged on the Government who, confident that our old luck would pull us through, at once declare war. The fleet, trying to close with the enemy, is destroyed in “a few minutes” by the “deadly engines” left behind by the evasive enemy; our amateurish armies are defeated on our own soil, and voilà tout.

[Pg vi]

Remarkable must have been the national insouciance, or despondent the eye which viewed it, to explain the impassioned actuality of such a reveillematin.

For one thing it may be remarked that The Battle of Dorking,[A] though in a sense the “history” of the pamphlet is already “ancient,” is really the first of its kind. The topic, then of such inspiring freshness, has since become well worn.

Mutatis mutandis, doubtless, much of General Chesney’s advice and warning might have been repeated on the occasion of the Boer War. If that were not a practical “alarum to the patriotic[Pg vii] Briton,” we ask ourselves what could be so called. Perhaps it combined the maximum of alarm with the minimum of national risk, but its beneficent influence can scarcely be questioned.

[Pg vii]

At the date of the republication of this pamphlet we face a peril immeasurably greater than that, if not equal to the Napoleonic terror of 1803; and we face it, as concerns the mass of our population, with a calmness which—to critical eyes and in view of the appeal made by the Government to the country—is at least susceptible of an unsatisfactory explanation.

If surprise, misunderstanding, may in a measure account for that, it would be idle to pretend that the national mood and temper (and the moods and tempers of nations will vary) were altogether—if they could ever be—such as encouraged the most sanguine hopes of our success when exposed to an ordeal of suddenness, extent, and severity unknown in the world’s history.

In estimating the risks of our situation, thoughtful criticism may be said to run naturally 

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