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THE BATTLE OF DORKING
THE BATTLE OF
DORKING
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
G. H. POWELL
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
MDCCCCXIV
PREFACE
The warnings and prophecies addressed to one generation must prove veryineffective if they are equally applicable to the next. But in theeloquent appeal published forty-three years ago, by General Chesney,with its vivid description and harrowing pathos, few readers will notrecognize parallel features to those of our own situation in September,1914.
True the handicaps of the invasion of August, 1871, are heavily piledupon the losing combatant. Not only the eternal Anglo-Irish trouble(so easily mistaken by the foreigner for such a difference as might befound separating two other countries) but complications with America,as well as the common form seduction of the British fleet to theDardanelles, a general unreadiness of all administrative departments,and a deep distrust of the “volunteer” movement, involve the wholedrama in an atmosphere of profound pessimism.
But there are scores of other details, counsels, and reflections (ofwhich we will not spoil the reader’s enjoyment by anticipation) which,as the common saying is of history when it repeats itself, “might havebeen written yesterday.” The[Pg vi] desperate condition of things is all themore remarkable as Englishmen had just witnessed the crushing defeat oftheir great ally—supposed to be the first military power of Europe—bythe enemy they are supposed to despise. The story is otherwise simpleenough. The secret annexation of Holland and Denmark is disclosed.People said we might have kept out of the trouble. But an impulsivenation egged on the Government who, confident that our old luck wouldpull us through, at once declare war. The fleet, trying to close withthe enemy, is destroyed in “a few minutes” by the “deadly engines” leftbehind by the evasive enemy; our amateurish armies are defeated on ourown soil, and voilà tout.
Remarkable must have been the national insouciance, or despondent theeye which viewed it, to explain the impassioned actuality of such areveillematin.
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.