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CAN GERMANY INVADE ENGLAND
and on the strength of a vision of a German flotilla, escorted by the German Fleet, sailing cheerfully across the North Sea, in a friendly fog, to certain capture or destruction, nobly indifferent to its own fate, if it could but succeed in placing two hundred thousand German troops in a position in which they could not be reinforced, and from which they could not retire, he closed his speech by calling for the immediate formation of a British citizen army of a million men.[1]
I hardly think I need assure my military and naval readers that General von Schellendorff had not the invasion of England in his mind, when he wrote the sentence which
- ↑ "No matter," Lord Roberts said, " how strong and powerful our Navy is, the main preventive of invasion is a numerous and efficient Home Army. . . Even if our Navy were double as strong as it is relatively to that of other Powers, the necessity of maintaining a sufficient and efficient Citizen Army for home defence would still be an essential condition of peace and security, as well as of public confidence." This " Citizen Army," he said, " must consist of a million men,"—The Times, November 24, 1908.
