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FOREWORD

PAGE

The Unknown To-morrow 7

The Peril of "Muddling Through" 13

The Peril of Exploiting the Poor 31

The Peril of not Doing Enough 49

The Peril of the Censorship 66

The Peril of the Press Bureau 81

The Peril of the Enemy Alien 96

The Peril of Deluding the Public 119

The Peril of Invasion 139

The Peril of Apathy 148

The Peril of Stifling the Truth 160

Facts to Remember 171

FOREWORD

THE UNKNOWN TO-MORROW

The following pages--written partly as a sequel to my book "German Spies in England," which has met with such wide popular favour--are, I desire to assure the reader, inspired solely by a stern spirit of patriotism.

This is not a book of "scaremongerings," but of plain, hard, indisputable facts.

It is a demand for the truth to be told, and a warning that, by the present policy of secrecy and shuffle, a distinct feeling of distrust has been aroused, and is growing more and more apparent. No sane man will, of course, ask for any facts concerning the country's resources or its intentions, or indeed any information upon a single point which, in the remotest way, could be of any advantage to the barbaric hordes who are ready to sweep upon us.

But what the British people to-day demand is a sound and definite pronouncement which will take them, to a certain extent, into the confidence of the Government--as apart from the War Office, against which no single word of criticism should be raised--and at the same time deal effectively with certain matters which, being little short of public scandals, have irritated and inflamed public opinion at an hour when every man in our Empire should put forth his whole strength for his God, his King, and his country.

Germany is facing the present situation with a sound, businesslike policy, without any vacillation, or any attempt to shift responsibility from one Department of the State to another. Are we doing the same?

What rule or method can be discerned, for example, in a system which allows news to appear in the papers in Scotland which is suppressed in the newspapers in England? Why, indeed, should one paper in England be permitted to print facts, and another, published half a mile away, be debarred from printing the self-same words?

The public--who, since August 4th last, are no longer school-children under the Head-Mastership of the Prime-Minister-for-the-Time-Being--are now wondering what all this curious censorship means, and for what reason such an unreliable institution--an institution not without its own scandals, and employing a thousand persons of varying ideas and warped notions--should have been established. They can quite understand the urgent necessity of preventing a horde of war correspondents, at the front, sending home all sorts of details regarding our movements and intentions, but they cannot understand why a Government offer of ?100 reward, published on placards all over Scotland for information regarding secret bases of petrol, should be forbidden to be even mentioned in England.

They cannot understand why the Admiralty should issue a notice warning the public that German spies, posing as British officers, are visiting Government factories while at the same time the Under-Secretary for War declares that all enemy aliens are known, and are constantly under police surveillance. They cannot understand either why, in face of the great imports of foodstuffs, and the patriotic movement on the part of Canada and our Overseas Dominions concerning our wheat supply, prices should have been allowed to increase so alarmingly, and unscrupulous merchants should be permitted to exploit the poor as they have done. They are mystified by the shifty shuttlecock policy which is being pursued towards the question of enemy aliens, and the marked disinclination of the authorities to make even the most superficial inquiry regarding cases of suspected espionage, notwithstanding the fact that German spies have actually been recognised among us by refugees from Antwerp and other Belgian cities.

The truth, which cannot be disguised, is that by the Government's present policy, and the amusing vagaries of its Press Censorship, the public are daily growing more and more apathetic concerning the war. While, on the one hand, we see recruiting appeals in all the clever guises of smart modern advertising, yet on the other, by the action of the authorities themselves, the man-in-the-street is being soothed into the belief that all goes well, and that, in consequence, no more men are needed and nobody need worry further.

We are told by many newspapers that Germany is at the end of her tether: that food supplies are fast giving out, that she has lost millions of men, that her people are frantic, that a "Stop the War" party has already arisen in Berlin, and that the offensive on the eastern frontier is broken. At home, the authorities would have us believe that there is no possibility of invasion, that German submarines are "pirates"--poor consolation indeed--that all alien enemies are really a deserving hardworking class of dear good people, and that there is no spy-peril. A year ago the British public would, perhaps, have believed all this. To-day they refuse to do so. Why they do not, I have here attempted to set out; I have tried to reveal something of the perils which beset our nation, and to urge the reader to pause and reflect for himself. Every word I have written in this book, though I have been fearless and unsparing in my criticism, has been written with an honest and patriotic intention, for I feel that it is my duty, as an Englishman, in these days of national peril to take up my pen--without political bias--solely for the public good.

Too long has dust been thrown in our eyes, both abroad and at home.

Let every Briton fighting for his country, and working for his country's good, remember that even though there be a political truce to-day, yet the Day of Awakening must dawn sooner or later. On that day, with the conscience of the country fully stirred, the harmless--but to-day powerless--voter will have something bitter and poignant to say when he pays the bill. He will then recollect some hard facts, and ask himself many plain questions. He will put to himself calmly the problem whether the present German hatred of England is not mainly due to the weak shuffling sentimentalism and opportunism of Germanophils in high places. And he will then search out Britain's betrayers, and place them in the pillory.

Assuredly, when the time comes, all these things--and many more--will be remembered. And the dawn of the Unknown To-morrow will, I feel assured, bring with it many astounding and drastic changes.

William Le Queux.

BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL

THE PERIL OF "MUDDLING THROUGH"

Has Britain, in the course of her long history, ever been prepared for a great war? I do not believe she has; she certainly was not ready last August, when the Kaiser launched his thunderbolt upon the world.

Perhaps, paradoxical as it may seem, this perpetual unreadiness may be, in a sense, part of Britain's strength.

We are a people slow of speech, and slow to anger. It takes much--very much--to rouse the British nation to put forth its full strength. "Beware of the wrath of the man slow to anger" is a useful working maxim, and it may be that the difficulty of arousing England is, in some degree, a measure of her terrible power once she is awakened.

Twice or thrice, at least, within living memory we have been caught all unready when a great crisis burst upon us--in the Crimea, in South Africa, and now in the greatest world-conflict ever seen. Hitherto, thanks to the amazing genius for improvisation which is characteristic of our race, we have "muddled through" somehow, often sorely smitten, sorely checked, but roused by reverses to further and greater efforts.

The bulldog tenacity that has ever been our salvation has been aroused in time, and we have passed successfully through ordeals which might have broken the spirit and crushed the resistance of nations whose mental and physical fibre was less high and less enduring.

We have "muddled through" in the past: shall we "muddle through" again? It is the merest truism--patent to all the world--that when Germany declared war, we were quite unready for a contest. For years the nation had turned a deaf ear to all warnings. The noble efforts of the late Lord Roberts, who gave the last years of his illustrious life--despite disappointments, and the rebuffs of people in high places who ought to have known--nay, who did know--that his words were literally true, passed unheeded.

Lord Roberts, the greatest soldier of the Victorian era, a man wise in war, and of the most transcendent sincerity, was snubbed and almost insulted, inside and outside the House of Commons, by a parcel of upstarts who, in knowledge and experience of the world and of the subject, were not fit to black his boots. "An alarmist and scaremonger" was perhaps the least offensive name that these worthies could find for him: and it was plainly hinted that he was an old man in his dotage. Lulled into an unshakable complacency by the smooth assurances of placeholders in comfortable jobs, the nation remained serenely asleep, and never was a country less ready for the storm that burst upon us last August. I had, in my writings--"The Invasion of England" and other works--also endeavoured to awaken the public; but if they would not listen to "Bobs," it was hardly surprising that they jeered at me.

I am speaking of the nation as a whole. To their eternal honour let it be said that there were nevertheless some who, for years, had foreseen the danger, and had done what lay in their power to meet it. Foremost among these we must place Mr. Winston Churchill, and the group of brilliant officers who are now the chiefs of the British Army on the Continent. To them, at least, I hope history will do full justice. It was no mere coincidence that just before the outbreak of war our great fleet--the mightiest Armada that the world has ever seen--was assembled at Spithead, ready, to the last shell and the last man, for any eventuality.

It was no mere coincidence that the magnificent First Division at Aldershot, trained to the minute by men who knew their business, were engaged when war broke out in singularly appropriate "mobilisation exercises." All honour to the men who foresaw the world-peril, and did their utmost to make our pitiably insufficient forces ready, as far as fitness and organisation could make them ready, for the great Day when their courage and endurance were to be so severely tested.

But when all this is said and admitted, it is clear that our safety, in the early days of the war, hung by a hair. Afloat, of course, we were more than a match for anything Germany could do, and our Fleet has locked our enemy in with a strangling grip that we hope is slowly choking out her industrial and commercial life. Ashore, however, our position was perilous in the extreme. Men's hair whitened visibly during those awful days when the tiny British Army, fighting heroically every step of the way against overwhelming odds, was driven ever back and back until, on the banks of the Marne, it suddenly turned at bay and, by sheer matchless valour, hurled the legions of the Kaiser back to ruin and defeat. The retreat was stayed, the enemy was checked and driven back, but the margin by which disaster was averted and turned into triumph was so narrow that nothing but the most superb heroism on the part of our gallant lads could have saved the situation. We had neglected all warnings, and we narrowly escaped paying an appalling price in the destruction of the flower of the British Army. With insufficient forces, we had again "muddled through" by the dogged valour of the British private.

To-day we are engaged in "muddling through" on a scale unexampled in our history. The Government have taken power to raise the British Army to a total of three million men. In our leisurely way we have begun to make new armies in the face of an enemy who for fifty years has been training every man to arms, in the face of an enemy who for ten or fifteen years at least has been steadily, openly, and avowedly preparing for the Day when he could venture, with some prospect of success, to challenge the sea supremacy by which we live, and move, and have our being, and lay our great Empire in the dust.

We neglected all warnings; we calmly ignored our enemy's avowed intentions; we closed our eyes and jeered at all those who told the truth; we deliberately, and of choice, elected to wait until war was upon us to begin our usual process of "muddling through." Truly we are an amazing people! Yet we should remember that the days when one Englishman was better than ten foreigners have passed for ever.

Naturally, our preference for waiting till the battle opened before we began to train for the fight led us into some of the most amazing muddles that even our military history can boast of. When the tocsin of war rang out, our young men poured to the colours from every town and village in the country. Everybody but the War Office expected it. The natural result followed: recruiting offices were simply "snowed under" with men, and for weeks we saw the most amazing chaos. The flood of men could neither be equipped nor housed, nor trained, and confusion reigned supreme. We had an endless series of scandals at camps, into which I do not propose to enter: probably, with all the goodwill in the world, they were unavoidable. Still the flood of men poured in. The War Office grew desperate. It was, clearly, beyond the capacity of the organisation to handle the mass of recruits, and then the War Office committed perhaps its greatest blunder. Unable to accept more men, it raised the physical standard for recruits. No one seems to have conceived the idea that it would have been better to take the names of the men and call them up as they were needed. Naturally the public seized upon the idea that enough men had been obtained, and there was an instant slump in recruiting which, despite the most strenuous of advertising campaigns--carried out on the methods of a vendor of patent medicines--has, unfortunately, not yet been overcome.

Following, came a period of unexampled chaos at the training-centres. Badly lodged, badly fed, clothed in ragged odds and ends of "uniforms," without rifles or bayonets, it is simply a marvel that the men stuck to their duty, and it is surely a glowing testimony to their genuine patriotism. I do not wish to rake up old scandals, and I am not going to indulge in carping criticism of the authorities because they were not able to handle matters with absolute smoothness when, each week, they were getting very nearly a year's normal supply of recruits. Confusion and chaos were bound to be, and I think the men--on the whole--realised the difficulties, and made the best of a very trying situation. But they were Britons! My object is simply to show how serious was our peril through our unpreparedness. If our enemy, in that time of preparation, could have struck a blow directly at us, we must, inevitably, have gone under in utter ruin. Happily, our star was in the ascendant. The magnificent heroism of Belgium, the noble recovery of the French nation after their first disastrous surprise, the unexampled valour of our Army, and the silent pressure of the Navy, saved us from the peril that encompassed us. Once again we had "muddled through" perhaps the worst part of our task.

No one can yet say that we are safe. This war is very far indeed from being won, for there is yet much to do, and many grave perils still threaten us. It is, perhaps, small consolation to know that most of the perils we brought upon ourselves by our persistent and foolish refusal to face plain and obvious facts: by our toleration of so-called statesmen who, fascinated by the Kaiser's glib talk, came very near to betraying England by their refusal to tell the country the truth, or even, without telling the country, to make adequate preparations to meet a danger which had been foreseen by every Chancellory in Europe for years past. It can never be said that we were not warned, plainly and unmistakably. The report of the amazing speech of the Kaiser, which I have recorded elsewhere, I placed in the hands of the British Secret Service as early as 1908, and the fact that it had been delivered was soon abundantly verified by confidential inquiries in official circles in Berlin. Yet, with the knowledge of that speech before them, Ministers could still be found to assure us that Germany was our firm and devoted friend!

The Kaiser, in the course of the secret speech in question, openly outlined his policy and said:

"Our plans have been most carefully laid and prepared by our General Staff. Preparations have been made to convey at a word a German army of invasion of a strength able to cope with any and all the troops that Great Britain can muster against us. It is too early yet to fix the exact date when the blow shall be struck, but I will say this: that we shall strike as soon as I have a sufficiently large fleet of Zeppelins at my disposal. I have given orders for the hurried construction of more airships of the improved Zeppelin type, and when these are ready we shall destroy England's North Sea, Channel, and Atlantic fleets, after which nothing on earth can prevent the landing of our army on British soil and its triumphal march to London.

"You will desire to know how the outbreak of hostilities will be brought about. I can assure you on this point. Certainly we shall not have to go far to find a just cause for war. My army of spies, scattered over Great Britain and France, as it is over North and South America, as well as all the other parts of the world where German interests may come to a clash with a foreign Power, will take good care of that. I have issued already some time since secret orders that will at the proper moment accomplish what we desire.

"I shall not rest and be satisfied until all the countries and territories that once were German, or where greater numbers of my former subjects now live, have become a part of the great mother country, acknowledging me as their supreme lord in war and peace. Even now I rule supreme in the United States, where almost one-half of the population is either of German birth or of German descent, and where three million German voters do my bidding at the Presidential elections. No American Administration could remain in power against the will of the German voters, who ... control the destinies of the vast Republic beyond the sea.

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