Be Very Afraid! - Invasion scare novels and their political influence, 1871-1914

This article first appeared in Soldiers of the Queen (Winter 2021)

For a period of around 40 years, from 1871 to 1914, British booklovers were bombarded with a new genre of novel: the invasion scare story. Their basic message was simple enough for the least discerning reader to understand: invasion is imminent. Robert Cole’s The Death Trap, published in 1907, provides a typical example of the genre: 'Blood flowed in streams, the streets were captured, recaptured, and captured again … Women, old men, and children were wantonly mangled and killed by the Germans in their lust for blood.'[1] In this article I shall show how, in the years leading up to the First World War, these novels were used to support forceful political campaigns which demanded increased defence expenditure and compulsory military service. In this way, the authors endeavoured to replace measured political debate with hysterical prophecies of invasion, starvation, torture and subjugation.

The books mark a low moment in Britain’s literary output.

Inventing the genre

Forecasts of future wars are possibly as old as the telling of stories, but the invasion scare genre is essentially a product of the invention of the steamship. It was easy for people to imagine enemy troops pouring from the great warships with their high speed and huge payloads onto England’s vast lengths of sandy beaches. The first invasion scare novel of this type was The Battle of Dorking: reminiscences of a volunteer, which came from the pen of George Chesney. [2] Chesney was more a soldier than a novelist. He had seen action during the Great Rebellion in India in 1857 and had gone on to have a distinguished military career, retiring as a knighted general. Today, though, Chesney’s soldiering life is eclipsed by his fame as the originator of the invasion scare novel. Chesney was inspired to write by the events of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. In just six months, two million French defenders were crushed by the invading German force, leaving 140,000 dead. It was, though, the 250,000 dead civilians that struck terror in the decorated general. If France could fall so easily, Britain could be next, he argued. Someone had to warn the country. Chesney eagerly took on the task in his writing The Battle of Dorking. The book appeared in serialised form in Blackwood’s Magazine in mid-1871. With Britain defenceless, the enemy in The Battle of Dorking lands effortlessly on the beaches and mows down the puny forces on British soil. Twenty thousand words later, Britain is reduced to an economic backwater, stripped of its colonies, its navy and its wealth. Chesney’s message was audacious. Britain was at the height of its imperial power. No other nation could match it in territory, resources or industry. Its colonies spoke of unmatched dominion. Its great merchant fleet, backed by the world’s most powerful navy, spoke of unassailable power. Chesney’s suggestion that all this was now under threat from continental powers was not welcome in high places. The Times condemned Chesney’s tale, saying, on 8 May, ‘It is pure childishness to put our Fleet out of the question, or provide for its instantaneous submersion, like the disappearance of a volcanic island. It is absurd to imagine that we could be invaded at a fortnight’s notice’. Prime Minister Gladstone called the book a ‘folly’ which, he told the Whitby Working Men’s Liberal Association in September, ‘would make us ridiculous in the eyes of the whole world.’ The public, though, took a different view. Blackwood’s Magazine’s sales rocketed. In its book format The Battle of Dorking sold 50,000 copies. Its success inspired writer after writer to take up his (they were all male) pen in an attempt to outdo Chesney, both in their power to terrify and in their profitable sales. Four hundred scaremongering novels followed between 1871 and 1914.

Replicating the genre

Since the focus of my article is the influence of the invasion scare authors on the politics and defence policies of the day, I have concentrated on those stories that were set in the time of publication. Hence I have excluded those stories that are essentially science fiction since they were unlikely to have had

much influence on current political debates about defence. (Stearn’s article provides a wider appreciation of the novels, including science fiction stories. I.F. Clarke takes the same wider approach in his The Tale of the Next Great War 1871-1914 3 and The Great War With Germany 1890-1914 4 ). The success of the genre depended on a regular supply of enemies. With rare exceptions, the choice was between France, Germany and Russia. Derek Linney, who runs the fascinating ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ website 5 , analysed the scenarios of 190 invasion-scare stories published between 1871 and 1914. He found that Germany was the chief belligerent, in 34 per cent of the stories; France and Russia were the attackers in 21 and 20 per cent of the books respectively. Surprisingly, quite a few books never identified the invader. The chosen enemy varied over time. France dominated the early books but faded into the background after the signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. Germany dominated the genre from 1900 onwards as it built up its massive navy. The Russian stories were mostly set towards the end of the nineteenth century when it was building up its fleet of warships. Although some authors perhaps wrote scare novels purely for financial gain, most wrote with the vigour and determination of a ‘the end is nigh’ religious zealot. This zeal is seen most clearly in the works of the absolute master of the genre: William Le Queux (pronounced ‘cue’). Le Queux wrote over two-hundred books but is now remembered only for his invasion scare stories. He was explicit in his reasons for writing his first scare novel, The Great War in England in 1897, which was published in 1894. 6 He sought, he said, ‘to bring vividly before the public the national dangers by which we are surrounded, and the absolute necessity which lies upon England to maintain her defences in an adequate

much influence on current political debates about defence. (Stearn’s article provides a wider appreciation of the novels, including science fiction stories. I.F. Clarke takes the same wider approach in his The Tale of the Next Great War 1871-1914 3 and The Great War With Germany 1890-1914 4 ). The success of the genre depended on a regular supply of enemies. With rare exceptions, the choice was between France, Germany and Russia. Derek Linney, who runs the fascinating ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ website 5 , analysed the scenarios of 190 invasion-scare stories published between 1871 and 1914. He found that Germany was the chief belligerent, in 34 per cent of the stories; France and Russia were the attackers in 21 and 20 per cent of the books respectively. Surprisingly, quite a few books never identified the invader. The chosen enemy varied over time. France dominated the early books but faded into the background after the signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. Germany dominated the genre from 1900 onwards as it built up its massive navy. The Russian stories were mostly set towards the end of the nineteenth century when it was building up its fleet of warships. Although some authors perhaps wrote scare novels purely for financial gain, most wrote with the vigour and determination of a ‘the end is nigh’ religious zealot. This zeal is seen most clearly in the works of the absolute master of the genre: William Le Queux (pronounced ‘cue’). Le Queux wrote over two-hundred books but is now remembered only for his invasion scare stories. He was explicit in his reasons for writing his first scare novel, The Great War in England in 1897, which was published in 1894. 6 He sought, he said, ‘to bring vividly before the public the national dangers by which we are surrounded, and the absolute necessity which lies upon England to maintain her defences in an adequate

much influence on current political debates about defence. (Stearn’s article provides a wider appreciation of the novels, including science fiction stories. I.F. Clarke takes the same wider approach in his The Tale of the Next Great War 1871-1914 3 and The Great War With Germany 1890-1914 4 ). The success of the genre depended on a regular supply of enemies. With rare exceptions, the choice was between France, Germany and Russia. Derek Linney, who runs the fascinating ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ website 5 , analysed the scenarios of 190 invasion-scare stories published between 1871 and 1914. He found that Germany was the chief belligerent, in 34 per cent of the stories; France and Russia were the attackers in 21 and 20 per cent of the books respectively. Surprisingly, quite a few books never identified the invader. The chosen enemy varied over time. France dominated the early books but faded into the background after the signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. Germany dominated the genre from 1900 onwards as it built up its massive navy. The Russian stories were mostly set towards the end of the nineteenth century when it was building up its fleet of warships. Although some authors perhaps wrote scare novels purely for financial gain, most wrote with the vigour and determination of a ‘the end is nigh’ religious zealot. This zeal is seen most clearly in the works of the absolute master of the genre: William Le Queux (pronounced ‘cue’). Le Queux wrote over two-hundred books but is now remembered only for his invasion scare stories. He was explicit in his reasons for writing his first scare novel, The Great War in England in 1897, which was published in 1894. 6 He sought, he said, ‘to bring vividly before the public the national dangers by which we are surrounded, and the absolute necessity which lies upon England to maintain her defences in an adequate

the north were in the enemy’s hands. Men, women and children were being butchered like sheep! … Hull was a mass of smoking ruins! 11 Le Queux’s The Great War in England in 1897 contains an excellent example of an author terrifying his readers as they envisage the sacking of a great city: Reading, in this case, when under attack by the French: Almost the first buildings attacked were the great factories of Messrs. Huntley & Palmer, whose 3000 hands were now, alas! idle owing to the famine. The stores were searched for biscuits, and afterwards the whole factory was

promptly set on fire. The Great Western, Queen’s, and George Hotels were searched from garret to cellar, and the wines and beer found in the latter were drunk in the streets … The banks were looted, St. Mary’s, Greyfriars’, and St. Lawrence’s Churches were burned, and Sutton & Sons’ [seed merchants] buildings and the Railway Works shared the same fate, while out in the direction of Prospect Hill Park all the houses were sacked, and those occupants who remained to guard their household treasures were put to the sword. 12 The immediacy and detail of the passage above were essential components of the scare novel. Readers had to feel that the enemy’s pillage and destruction was in a town like their town, and in a street like their street. For readers who were neither sufficiently terrorised by the enemy’s landing nor by his destruction of buildings and property, Dawson in The Message adds execution even for the most moderate of offences, including: Misleading German troops. Injuring in any manner whatever any German subject. Injuring any road, rail, or waterway, or means of communication. Offering resistance of any kind whatsoever to the advance and occupation of the German Army. 13 In the stories the various enemies invariably gain control of the country in short order and at little cost to themselves. Few authors, though, believe that the enemy would stop at the mere

possession of the country. Instead, they thickly lace their tales with scenes of wanton killing and hostage taking. In The Death Trap, Cole’s invaders come across a humble cottage, where a casual action has horrific consequences: In one village a half-witted lad threw stones at a [German] cavalry patrol from a cottage garden. Two troopers seized him, and dragged him out into the road. ‘Caught in the act,’ said the lieutenant in charge of the party. ‘Shoot the d___l!’ There was no wall near, but only the cottage where the boy lived with his [inevitably!] widowed mother. ‘Stand him up against the cottage!’ ordered the officer. The idiot had enough sense to comprehend his doom. Feebly protesting, muttering gibberish, his eyes round in anticipation of the approaching horror. 14 Still the novelists have not reached the bottom of their Pandora’s boxes of horrors to come. Starvation and disease await the civilian population, as in Starved Into Surrender: Then came pestilence. Smallpox … began to spread with raging rapidity … The dead bodies were almost more numerous than the authorities could cope with … Typhoid was almost as rampant as smallpox. Plague and pestilence possessed the land, their grim comrade, Death, overshadowing the realm while his ruthless agents reaped the ghastly harvest for him. 15 Posteritas opts for starvation in order to frighten the readers of his 1885 The Siege of London: Men and women, gaunt, grim, and ghastly, wandered about in hopeless demoralisation; and starving children with eyes starting from their heads and bones protruding through their skins, made piteous wailing as they moaned for food. 16 Other authors casually exaggerate the immediate consequences of an invasion on food stocks and prices, as in The Death Trap, where bread prices rise on the first day of war almost as fast as the dough in the oven: In the afternoon the price of bread rose by leaps and bounds. At four o’clock it was double the normal; by the evening it had trebled. 17

Realia Many authors created this sense of realism and immediacy through simulated despatches, telegrams and posters. The resulting style is a cross-over between fact and fiction, which is particularly effective if the fictional documents came from faux ‘real’ sources, such as a proclamation signed by the Kaiser or a newspaper article purporting to come from a real newspaper. Thus, in When England Slept, we learn about events in London from a report in the Liverpool Courier (the Germans had shut down all the London papers): STUPENDOUS COUP BY THE GERMANS LONDON SEIZED IN ONE NIGHT WITHOUT DECLARATION OF WAR! 18 The newsstands offered an alternative device for creating a ‘happening now’ immediacy. For example, in The Great War in England in 1897 the newsstands report the invasion before any officials are aware of it. The politicians, diplomats and the public democratically share news of the enemy’s arrival when, ‘on this hot, oppressive Saturday night in August’ they read the screaming headlines of special editions of the newspapers: INVASION OF ENGLAND. WAR DECLARED BY FRANCE AND RUSSIA. HOSTILE FLEETS ADVANCING. EXTRAORDINARY MANIFESTO BY THE TSAR. 19

Some stories are brought to life by including real people (under their own names, or thinly disguised). In doing so, the novelists are saying ‘this is not a novel; it is a prediction’. One of the most widely featured people is the larger-than-life Admiral Lord Charles Beresford (1846-1919). He had no great merit as a naval commander – indeed he had little enthusiasm for serving at sea – but, as a pompous showman and a swashbuckling naval officer, he revelled in controversy and was adored by the British public. Tracy provided Beresford with a suitably heroic role in his 1896 The Final War when his Channel Squadron ‘was steaming hard for Spithead’ 20 to cut off the invaders. Despite having ‘only nine battleships’ 21 Beresford annihilates the invasion transports, which are protected by seventeen enemy battleships. Another means of making the stories seem real was to set scenes in well-known places. Le Queux made a speciality of this since he reconnoitred all the locations featured in his stories, marking pertinent details on large-scale ordnance maps. Thus his readers in Hull and Birmingham could immediately identify with the war that he brought to their home turfs in The Great War in England in 1897: [Hull] Among the first prominent structures to topple and fall was the Wilberforce Monument, and then, in rapid succession, shots carried away another dome of the Dock Office, and the great square towers of St. John’s and Holy Trinity Churches. [Birmingham] From Corporation Street a brilliant, ruddy glow suffused the sky, as both the Law Courts and the Grand Theatre were in flames, while St. Mary’s Church and the Market Hall had also been fired by incendiaries. 22 Disabled defences The stories relied on Britain bei

Disabled defences The stories relied on Britain being caught by surprise and unready to repel an invasion. A favourite scenario of the authors was to arrange for the fleet to be called away, leaving Britain’s shores unguarded. Albert Curtis in his 1902 A New Trafalgar begins his story by sending off the Channel Squadron in order to clear the way for the invader: It must be said that the Germans had chosen their time well for their raid; the Channel Squadron was on its usual autumn cruise at Gibraltar so that the first brunt of the storm would fall on a British battle-line of nearly obsolete ships … Such splendid men in such wretched warships, the pity of it! 23 The anonymous author of the 1887 The Battle Off Worthing goes one further than most of the authors in that he also disables Britain’s allies, so creating a 1940 ‘standing alone’ scenario: … Almost simultaneously … we received news from America that Fenians ❋ were massing in considerable numbers on the borders of Canada … Ten ships, and 15,000 troops were at once despatched … the same day tidings reached us that the French and German troops had entered Belgium … From our half-hearted allies left to us, we had no hope of adequate assistance. Austria had her hands full. Italy, Spain and Scandinavia, hemmed in by our powerful foes, were of little avail to us … 24 ( ❋ The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican organisation, based in America. Its members had raided Canada in 1866 but had been disbanded seven years before the writing of The Battle Off Worthing.) The unreadiness of the navy is matched in many stories by the unreadiness of the government. In The Death Trap, Cole tried to persuade his readers that the government is paralysed by indecision as the enemy approaches. All the most important

decision-makers are away in the country: ‘of the huge Reydleigh Cabinet, nearly two-thirds of the members were absent’. 25 Meanwhile, the army and the navy struggle to respond. But, the narrator tells us, ‘No previous preparation had been made in any department to meet a grave national crisis.’ 26 Just a year earlier, Wood had used the same mechanism in his The Enemy in Our Midst to ensure that the enemy took Britain without challenge: … the head of the Army … was away in Ireland … the Prime Minister … was in Dublin … The Secretary of State for War was at sea, in the new Admiralty yacht, one or two Cabinet Ministers with him; the Home Fleet was in the Atlantic and the Fleet Reserve was unavailable because there were not men enough to handle the ships. The Court was absent in Scotland. 27 Dispersing the army was not enough for some writers, who added under-manning and under-equipping to their charge sheet. Le Queux made a thorough job of disabling Britain’s home forces in The Invasion of 1910: Men had guns without ammunition; cavalry and artillery were without horses; engineers only half-equipped; volunteers with no transport whatever; [observation] balloon sections without balloons, and searchlight units vainly trying to obtain the necessary instruments. 28 Just as the warships are never in the right place when invasion looms in the novels, so the army is often marooned in far flung places whenever invasion approaches. The Great War of 189_ Lord Salisbury (fictionally) tells the House of Lords: ‘There is at this moment no battalion in the whole kingdom, except those of the Guards, that is fit to go on active service as it stands on parade.’ 29 Even if troops are on the mainland, mobilisation

is always too slow to stop the invader from gaining a strong beachhead. Dawson follows this pattern in The Message, taking the opportunity to disparage War Minister Richard Haldane’s creation of the Territorials in 1908: Unfortunately our reports from correspondents at the various southern military depôts are all to the effect that mobilisation will be a slow business. As you know, the regulars in England have been reduced to an almost negligible minimum, and the mobilisation of the ‘Haldane Army’ involves the slow process of drawing men out of private life into the field. What is worse, it means in many cases Edinburgh men reporting themselves at Aldershot, and south-country men reporting themselves in the north. And then their practical knowledge so far leaves them simply men in the street. 30 The civilian fi ghtback While the authors are determined to demonstrate that the state would abandon the people as soon as the first foreign boot sank into the sand on an English beach, the people themselves often prove to be noble and heroic in their spontaneous fightback. The lone hero was one way of demonstrating this. One of the most memorable lone heroes in the stories is John Steel in The Enemy in Our Midst. Steel is unemployed and lives from hand to mouth while trying to support his wife and child. His country has done nothing for him, but still he is ready to play his part in turning out the invader. 31 London is overrun by the Germans. When Lord Harden asks Steel what can be done to save the city, Steel replies: I’m an Englishman, an’ a soldier, a trained fighter. An’ there are scores of thousands like me … Let us be made

the backbone of the home defence, an’ we’ll show any foreign nation ’at we’re not the rotten Army they fancy us to be … Form us into a National Guard, sir. In fact Steel does not wait for Harden to act. He walks out of Harden’s house: … picking up a dead man’s rifle and a handful of cartridges, he fell into his old ranks as naturally as if there had been no break in his army service. 32 Steel then proceeds to ‘execute’ a notorious German spy, saying ‘I will order no man to do what I would not do myself.’ 33 The message is clear: when the invasion comes, the novels’ readers will be on their own. They can expect nothing from the state. The Battle Off Worthing offers another typical cameo role for a heroic individual when an 82-year-old farmer is failed by the forces of the state. He prepares to defend his livelihood, as the narrator explains: He had an old gun (with a flint lock I believe), into which he intended to put a double charge, to shoot the first Frenchman who came near his house, but budge he would not. I told him he would most certainly be shot or hanged, but he received my warning with renewed indignation. An Englishman’s house was his castle, as all the world knew; no jury would convict him for defending it; that could not be against the law. 34 In The Invaders it is a group of boys who play the hero when the Germans are inside the central station in Birmingham: The boys firing with wonderful coolness and effect, dropped every foreigner in the station within a few seconds. [But later, in the street outside] one by one, the small group of boys ebbed out their blood on the pavement of Colmore Road … To them fell the honour of striking on British soil the first blow of England’s awful vengeance. 35

Other authors foresaw a fightback by the people on a much grander scale as in The Siege of London. This book is unusual in that the enemy has landed in Scotland, so lumbering himself with a hazardous march south. The hardy northerners see their opportunity: From the North to Edinburgh his troops had suffered greatly by the predatory attack of scattered foes; now as he went south, towards Carlisle, it seemed as if every hill, every wood, every ravine suddenly produced men by magic. They started up from the heather, and bounded down from the rocks, and with weapons of all kinds, from rifles to reaping-hooks, they threw themselves on the flanks of the advancing army, and strew scores before they themselves were slain. They gave no quarter, and asked for none. 36 In The Death Trap Cole imagined his populous being at the barricades, redeeming the army’s failure to defend them: The citizen soldiers soon learnt the art of fighting behind defences. The invaders advanced in almost complete silence until they were only a few yards away from the obstructions. Then the street became a volcano crater, an inferno let loose. Amid the roar of a hurricane bullets leapt at them from barricades and poured down upon their heads. Women hurled bricks and lumps of coal upon them, some connected hoses to steam-boilers and scalded them with boiling water. They fell in heaps. 37 That scene has a hint of credibility, whereas Le Queux in The Invasion of 1910 stretches believability when he asks his readers

to imagine the people in running battles with the enemy on the London streets: The populace came forth in swarms, men and women, armed with any weapon or article upon which they could lay their hands, and all fired with the same desire. And in many instances they succeeded, be it said. Hundreds of men who came forth were armed with rifles which had been carefully secreted on the entry of the enemy into the metropolis … The defence of the Londoners was most obstinate. In the streets, Londoners attacked the enemy with utter disregard for the risks they ran. Women, among them many young girls, joined in the fray, armed with pistols and knives. 38

The breakdown of civil order There is a general assumption in the novels that an invasion would rapidly lead to a breakdown in civil order. A typical scenario is the mob’s attack on the government in The Siege of London: … an angry mob rushed to the Houses of Parliament while the House was sitting; and there is little doubt that, had the mob not been hurled back by a strong body of Volunteer troops, the members of the Government would have fallen a prey to the fury of the people. As it was, the massive railings surrounding the entrance to the House were torn up and scattered about the road, and thousands of windows were smashed … The official residence of the Prime Minister was attacked and wrecked, and several members of the Government were almost torn to pieces. 39 Generally, though, the politicians are ignored by the inflamed populous, who have more urgent needs than revenge, such as raiding food stocks. In The Enemy in Our Midst the starving population goes off in search of food. The raiders do a thorough job: … [there] was a rush for the foodstuffs which were already available for seizure. Provision shops were gutted; wholesale and retail business houses were ransacked … Docks, wharves, warehouses and factories – all were looted, and the very ships and barges in the river were boarded and depleted. 40 The wealthy are targets, too, as in When All Men Starve: Bands of discharged labourers, artisans, clerks – men who had been law-abiding citizens in the vanished days of national prosperity – took to the road and organised daring robberies. In the suburbs of London, and especially at Kew, Richmond, Hampstead, and such genteel neighbourhoods, the pretty villas of the well-todo classes were frequently forced and gutted by armed men; the Commons near London became infested with amateur highwaymen, many of these mounted upon bicycles … The rural police were powerless with these organised bands of robbers. 41 In Starved Into Surrender, Clarke goes further in his predictions for the effects of starvation. The forces of order are themselves weakened by the famine: The skeleton policemen were too weak to keep order; indeed, they ceased to attend to their duties, but lay down in their houses to die like the rest of their fellows. 42 In this way Clarke suggests that the last remnant of community is swept away. Only individuals remain. Spies and betrayers The invasion scare authors are rarely content to attribute a successful invasion solely to deficiencies in the army and navy

as they add spies and treachery to their charge sheets. In book after book the authors allege that (a) Britain is riddled with spies; (b) the government knows who the spies are; and (c) the government takes no action against these spies. In Spies of the Kaiser Ray Raymond reveals the widespread presence of spies to his friend Jack: My dear fellow, have not the police received orders from our Government to close their eyes to the doings of these gentry? England is the paradise of the spy, and will remain so until we can bring pressure to bear to compel the introduction of fresh legislation against them. 431 Eardley-Wilmot offers a similar scenario in The Battle of the North Sea: [The Germans were] well served by their numerous agents in England, the German Government had not only accurate knowledge of all movements of our Fleet, but also preliminary notice of the despatch which actually declared war. 44 The Message goes further as Dawson alleges that the postal service is brim-full of German agents, placing them in a position to close down English communications prior to an enemy landing. The anti-war journalist Dick Morden warns Constance Grey that: Out of one hundred postmasters within a sixty-mile radius of Harwich, eighty-one have obtained their positions within the last two years, and of those sixty-nine bear names which indicate German nationality or extraction. But that is only one small item. An analysis of the Eastern Railway employees, and of the larger business firms between here and Ipswich, will tell a more startling tale, unless I am greatly mistaken. 45 For the scaremongering authors, the British government is so inept that it even disregards the reporting of suspicious foreigners. In Great Was the Fall the national papers reveal a huge influx of Germans in Hull: Inquiries made at the railway station reveal the fact that numbers of broken-English-speaking gentlemen have been arriving from London and all the big cities. The men would appear to belong to the poorer classes, for no appreciable demand on large hotel accommodation had been noticed … No reason can be assigned for the sudden influx of Teutons. No action is taken. 46 Even the French digging of a not-so-secret Channel tunnel raises no eyebrows. In Seaward for the Foe, Headon Hill (pseudonym of Francis Grainger) features the spy-hunting Inspector Despard. He comes across the exit to a tunnel in the grounds of Brandon Towers and sees that the French are in the last hours of completing its excavation. Despard, who has found the tunnel by accident, hears a French voice from inside: ‘Hark, my children! There are the trumpets of our brave troops! But a few more tons of earth to remove, and we shall shake hands with them. By tomorrow morning there will be 100,000 Frenchmen in Kent.’ 47 In classic cliff-hanger style, Despard closes the steel door on the French. England is saved. Another recurring theme is that amateurs know all about the extensive spy networks but the government knows nothing. Ray, in The Message, is a typical amateur spy-catcher as portrayed by the novelists. As is to be expected, his knowledge is extensive: ‘Well,’ Ray said at last, ‘it’s a great pity, old chap, you didn’t mention this before. The Baron de Moret is no

other person than Lucien Carron, one of Hartmann’s most trusted agents, while Julie’s real name is Erna Hertfeldt, a very clever female spy, who has, of late, been engaged in endeavouring to obtain certain facts regarding the defences of the Humber estuary.’ 48 In the anonymous Great Was the Fall we find that policemen are even inadvertently assisting spies. Lieutenant Jack Wright is leaving a naval shipyard late one evening after tailing a suspicious looking man. Seeing the man leave ahead of him, he asks the policeman at the gate, ‘Caught any more spies lately, constable?’ to which the policeman responds, ‘That man wasn’t no spy, sir. He was a foreign artist what wanted to paint a picture of a wrecked battleship. He said a man-o’-war in process of construction was the nearest approach to the real thing he could conceive …’ 49 Democracy as a threat to defence A disturbing aspect of many of the novels was their portrayal of democracies as being incapable of defending nations. Seaforth (the pseudonym of the military expert George Sydenham Clarke, later Baron Sydenham of Combe) takes this view in The Last Great Naval War when he blames party politics for the failure of Parliament to provide the money for adequately defending Britain. Instead of securing Britain’s defence, the House of Commons, says Seaforth, wastes its time in ‘futile talk and the petty strife of ephemeral parties’. 50 In When William Came it is Doctor Holham (a vaguely defined character) who points out the failure of democracy to defend the nation. With the country now firmly under German rule, the doctor offers his explanation of events to a Murrey Yeovil: ‘In a democracy such as ours was[,] the Government of the day must more or less reflect the ideas and temperament of the nation in all vital matters, and the British nation in those days could not have been persuaded of the urgent need for military apprenticeship or of the deadly nature of its danger. It was willing now and then to be half-frightened and to have half-measures, or, one might better say, quarter-measures taken to reassure it, and the governments of the day were willing to take them, but any political party or group of statesmen that had said “the danger is enormous and immediate, the sacrifices and burdens must be enormous and immediate,” would have met with certain defeat at the polls.’ 51 Some of the authors who decry democracy as being incompatible with a sound defence policy place their faith in ‘non-political’ conventions and senates. Somehow, the mere change of name from ‘Parliament’ brings an end to all disagreements. Sydenham, a military man to the core, with little faith in politics, proposes his solution in The Great War with Germany 1890-1914: Thus the mind of the people was quickly made up, and the National Convention in London in 189_ laid the foundations of the National Senate which, it has been announced will meet in Ottawa next year, and at Sydney in 1936 … Party politics, in the sense understood by our fathers, have ceased to exist. 52 (He surely meant ‘Imperial Senate’ rather than a ‘National Senate’.) Sydenham’s belief that senate meetings would only be needed once every forty years or so says much about his views on the role of democratic government. Nevertheless, he tells his readers that his is the path to nirvana: … there are no strongly-marked lines of party in the National Senate, in which the voice of a great and united people finds expression. The honour of the nation, it

foreign-relations, and its preparations to hold its own if need be against the world in arms, demand grave debate, but exclude party rivalry and the jarring elements from petty personal ambitions. 53 The lotus-eating public Several books feature the British as an indulgent people, wrapped up in their pleasure-seeking and taking no interest in politics. Doctor Woodthrop in The Message is ‘popular, honest, steadygoing; a fine, typical Englishman’, but: He [only] talked politics for a week at election time. … The country’s defences were actually of far less importance in his eyes than the country’s cricket averages. 54 In When the Eagle Flies Seaward, Lieutenant Lillinge finds the same indifference to defence matters as he sits in the Tavistock Hotel, eyeing the scene. He has no difficulty in seeing the self-centred nature of the clientele, who put their own pleasures ahead of taking an interest in their country’s defence: Well-groomed and well-fed, thick and pursy [fat], with every appearance of affluence about them, of success and ease in their professions, they struck Lillinge as being the apotheoses of those two great classes that have often exerted a malign influence on the Country’s fortunes, namely, the Little Englander and stay-at-home Briton. 55 For the anonymous author of Great Was the Fall, easy living, encouraged by low taxation, had undermined defence policy, as Colonel Trevelyan (ex-Indian Army), explains to Mr Frampton, a local Liberal politician: ‘What’s the good of providing funds for Tom, Dick, or Harry’s old age when in a year or so Germany walks in and scoops the lot? The average voting public are a lot of blind idiots: men living in houses on which the sea is encroaching. The Government comes along with specious promises. “Give me your vote, keep me in office and I’ll buy you new furniture, give you cheap food, and make your life generally more pleasant.” ’ 56 So much for the books. It is now time to turn to their creators and those who backed the creators. The authors The authors of these novels mainly fall into three broad groups: experienced novelists; military and naval people; and journalists. Amongst the experienced novelists who turned to the genre there are examples such as Hector Munro (Saki) and William Le Queux, both of whom were already well known to a wide reading public. Saki had nine titles to his credit before he wrote When William Came, published in 1913. Le Queux had been writing since 1891 and had published at least 50 novels before he penned The Invasion of 1910. Over his lifetime he is attributed with having written 200 novels in the gaps between – according to him – hunting down spies, being a spy himself, taking an active part in the Wireless Experimental Association (of which he was president) and being a consul of the Republic of San Marino. Nevertheless, his obituarist in the Morning Post described him as: ‘an amiable and placid little man, who looked as if he caught the 9.15 from Ealing to the City every morning’. Arnold-Forster is another author in the experienced category. Before he began his political career he was employed by the publisher Cassell to write school textbooks, including the bestselling The Citizen Reader. His interest in military matters began in boyhood, leading to his eventually holding ministerial posts in both the Admiralty and the War Office. Many journalists joined the scaremongering community. Louis Tracy, for example, had been in the trade for twelve years

before he wrote his The Final War in a fit of jingoistic enthusiasm: ‘The whole world seemed to be up in arms, ready and eager to jump on Old England,’ he later said. Francis Grainger was another journalist who wrote fiction as a side-line, using the pseudonym Headon Hill, as in The Spies of Wight. 57 His preferred theme was crime, with titles such as Zambra the Detective: Some Clues from his Notebook (1894) and Coronation Mysteries and Other Stories (1902). The technical authors who chose to write scaremongering novels were often handicapped by their backgrounds. Their stories were usually their first and only attempt at fiction, but they were rarely able to rise to the demands of something worthy of the description ‘novel’. Instead, they preferred to rely on their superior professional knowledge to convince the reader by facts and logic rather than by character and emotion. Few writers were more technically qualified than Seaforth who, as George Sydenham Clarke, was secretary to the Colonial Defence Committee when he wrote The Last Great Naval War. It is a story without characters but rich in tedious prose: Distinguished Admirals (some of whom had not been to sea for many years, and had never commanded an ironclad) had occupied their learned leisure in writing long letters to The Times condemning whole classes of HM ships; and the public, unable to discriminate between thoughtful criticism and the airing of fads, had derived the impression that the great navy of England was in its decadence. 58 An author of Le Queux’s class would have given us the text of those letters to The Times. We would have felt the rage and admired the biting phrases. Inevitably, The Last Great Naval War might readily have been sold as a treatment for insomnia. William Laird Clowes was another author in the expert category, being one of the foremost naval journalists of his day. He assiduously attended fleet manoeuvres and was naval correspondent to the Daily News (1885), The Standard (1887- 1890), and The Times (1890-1895). He entered into the spirit of the genre with his racy if somewhat farcical The Captain of the Mary Rose, 59 featuring a cashiered lieutenant who buys his own warship and takes up privateering to save Britain. Philip Colomb, as a vice admiral, was widely recognised to be an outstanding seaman with a vast knowledge of naval history and a fervent interest in new technology. He was well-known to the public by the time he co-authored The Great War of 189_. Amongst Colomb’s other works is Slave Catching in the Indian Ocean (the title is misleading; Colomb was hunting down slave traders, not acquiring slaves). He was also noted for his naval innovations and his deep knowledge of naval strategy. His prolific writings earned him the sobriquet ‘Column and a Half’. ‘There is no one man to whom the Navy of to-day owes so much,’ said The Times in his obituary on October 16, 1899. With this background, we are not surprised to find that Colomb is not a man to tell a racy story. Other highly qualified authors include Fred T Jane, the international authority on warships, who wrote Blake of the Rattlesnake 60; and Rear Admiral Sir Sidney Eardley-Wilmot who wrote The Next Naval War. Eeardley-Wilmot was an authority on heavy guns during the years when the dreadnoughts were being developed, receiving Admiral Fisher’s praise as ‘the most efficient chief of the munitions department at the Admiralty’. The guilty backers It was, though, newspapers and literary journals that drove the genre’s sales rather than the abilities of the authors. The editors and proprietors of the popular press saw their role as partisan polemicists. Scares and scandals sold more papers than

plain news or reasoned argument. Additionally, the agitations of political pressure groups such as the Navy League and the National Service League helped keep invasion scares in the news. No one person did more to support the invasion-scare genre than the press magnate Lord Northcliffe (formerly Alfred Harmsworth). The exaggerated articles on defence in his Daily Mail, and his many highly personalised campaigns against government ministers, left him with few friends in high places. In 1904 the Saturday Review wrote: We advisedly say that he has done more than any man of his generation to pervert and enfeeble the mind of the multitude … We fail to discover in his record any performance of those higher duties to the State or those wider services to humanity, which alone entitle a citizen to become a peer. Northcliffe’s interest in the invasion scare genre had begun in 1894 when he serialised ‘The Poisoned Bullet’ in Answers – his first newspaper. The story later appeared in book form as The Great War in England in 1897. His next scaremongering venture was The Siege of Portsmouth 61 in 1897 which appeared in a local newspaper that he had bought with the sole purpose of influencing an ongoing by-election. He ran the story throughout the election campaign, with the last instalment appearing on polling day. Chapter titles included ‘Startling Appearance of a French Man O’War at Spithead’ and the ‘Battle of Eddystone’. Even by Northcliffe’s standards this was an egregious example of political propaganda disguised as literature. The editor Leo Maxse was another malicious force, who stands in the dock alongside the scaremongering novelists and their promoters. As a radical Tory, Maxse was vehemently hostile towards Germany and an opponent of Zionism. During his thirty-nine year stint with the right-wing National Review Maxse was well-placed to stir up anti-German feeling. When he was offered the prestigious post of editor of the Cape Times in 1899, he turned down the opportunity on the grounds that he had to stay in Britain to warn the public of the growing German menace. The National Review, though, was not the sort of paper to include fiction so Maxse’s influence was confined to his untiring attacks on the defence policies of successive governments. No policy was ever right in his view. The formation of the Committee of Imperial Defence (1904), Admiral Fisher’s naval reforms (1904-1909) and Haldane’s creation of the Territorial Force (1908) were all presented as seriously incommensurate with the coming German threat. Such a barrage of ill-informed (Maxse had no defence experience) rage provided a helpful background for the scaremongering novelists. A third member of the journalistic cabal that lent such strong support to the novelists was H A Gwynne, editor of The Standard from 1904 to 1911 and the Morning Post from 1911 to 1937. It has been said that, for him, ‘the cause of empire was an absolute’. When at The Standard, Gwynne wrote: ‘I want to rouse England to the fact that she is in danger.’ He was a more fanatical patriot than he was a commercially-focused journalist. His creed was the Conservative Party and the Empire, but when the party failed to match his expectations in 1917, he helped found the short-lived National Party. His aim was to bring down the coalition Prime Minister, Lloyd George, in order to replace him with Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, presumably as a military dictator. Gwynne was a scaremongering journalist who was prepared to act out his fantasies, even at the risk of execution for treachery: in February 1918 he stood in the dock at the Bow Street Police Court alongside Colonel à Court Repington, The Times’ military correspondent 1904-1918, on a charge under the Defence of the Realm Act. The two men were accused of unlawfully Autumn / Winter 2021 Soldiers of the Queen Issue 182 39

disclosing military plans; both were found guilty and fined £100 with costs. No wonder Gwynne was so supportive of the novelists. A malign force The naval scare novel was a malign force in the politics of the years leading up to the First World War. The authors, publishers and the popular press connived (with varying motives) in a saturation campaign to terrorise their readers into demanding millions to be spent on defending Britain against the forthcoming invasion. They openly used the genre to corrupt the political debate. Specifically, then, the novelists are guilty of two serious charges. First, they grossly misrepresented the intentions of their featured enemies – particularly France and German. Neither country had any plans to invade Britain in this period, yet the novelists portrayed these countries as poised for a surprise attack on British beaches. This gave rise to political movements that demanded ever greater spending on British warships and the introduction of national service. Second, the books helped to create the hysterical atmosphere in Britain that led to the First World War. When the continental armies began to move in the last days of July 1914 Britain had made no commitment to join in a continental war. Britain’s choice to enter that war was no doubt influenced by the frenzied crowds that filled central London in those last days of peace. Many of them would have seen no difference between the Germany over the Channel and the Germany in the scare stories. For them, the scaremongering authors had made war seem both welcome and inevitable.

Notes

1 Cole, R W. The Death Trap. London: Greening & Co, 1907. 2 Chesney, G T. The Battle of Dorking: reminiscences of a volunteer. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871. 3 Clarke, I F (ed.). The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871-1914 : Fictions of Future Warfare and of Battles Still-to-Come. Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995. 4 Clarke, I F (ed.). The Great War with Germany, 1890-1914 : Fictions and Fantasies of the War-to-Come. Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997. 5 www.theriddleofthesands.com. 6 Le Queux, W. The Great War in England in 1897. London: Tower Publishing Co, 1894. (First published in Answers). 7 Wood, W. The Enemy In Our Midst. London: John Long, 1906. 8 Niemann, A. The Coming Conquest of England. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1904. (This is the English translation of Der Weltkrieg deutsche Träume). 9 Curties, H. When England Slept. London: Everett & Co, 1909. 10 Wallace, Edgar. Private Selby. London: Ward, Lock, 1912. (First serialised in The Sunday Journal from March 1912). 11 Anon (M, A H). Great Was the Fall by a Naval Officer. London: John Long, 1912. 12 Le Queux, W. The Great War in England in 1897. 13 Dawson, A J. The Message. London: E Grant Richards, 1907. 14 Cole, R W. The Death Trap. 15 Clarke, C A. Starved Into Surrender. London: C W Daniel, 1904. 16 Posteritas (pseudonym of an unknown author). The Siege of London. London: Wyman & Sons, 1885. 17 Cole, R W. The Death Trap. 18 Curties, H. When England Slept. 19 Le Queux, W. The Great War in England in 1897. 20 Tracy, Louis. The Final War. A story of the great betrayed. London: C A Pearson, 1896. 21 Ibid. 22 Le Queux, W. The Great War in England in 1897. 23 Curtis, A. A New Trafalgar. London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1

24 Anon (‘A captain of the Royal Navy’). The Battle Off Worthing: why the invaders never got to Dorking: a prophecy. London: London Literary Society, 1887. 25 Cole, R W. The Death Trap. 26 Ibid. 27 Wood, W. The Enemy In Our Midst. 28 Le Queux, W. The Invasion of 1910: with a full account of the siege of London. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1906. (First published in the Daily Mail). 29 Colomb, P, et al. The Great War of 189_. London: William Heinemann, 1895. 30 Dawson, A J. The Message. 31 Wood, W. The Enemy In Our Midst. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Anon. The Battle Off Worthing: why the invaders never got to Dorking: a prophecy. 35 Tracy, Louis. The Invaders. London: C A Pearson, 1901. 36 Posteritas. The Siege of London. 37 Cole, R W. The Death Trap. 38 Le Queux, W. The Invasion of 1910: with a full account of the siege of London. 39 Posteritas. The Siege of London. 40 Wood, W. The Enemy In Our Midst. 41 Gleig, C. When All Men Starve. London: John Lane, 1898. 42 Clarke, C A. Starved Into Surrender. 43 Le Queux, W. Spies of the Kaiser. Plotting the downfall of England. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1909. 44 Eardley-Wilmot, Sir S M. The Battle of the North Sea in 1914. Hugh Rees Ltd, 1913. 45 Dawson, A J. The Message. 46 Anon (M, A H). Great Was the Fall. 47 Hill, H (Francis Grainger). Seaward for the Foe. London: Ward, Lock & Co, 1903. 48 Dawson, A J. The Message. 49 Anon (M, A H). Great Was the Fall. 50 Seaforth, A N. (George Clarke, 1st Baron Sydenham of Combe). The Last Great Naval War. An historical retrospective. London: Cassell & Co, 1891. 51 Saki (Hector Munro). When William Came. A story of London under the Hohenzollerns. London: John Lane, 1914. 52 Clarke, I F (ed.). The Great War with Germany, 1890-1914. 53 Ibid. 54 Dawson, A J. The Message. 55 Vaux, Patrick (Maclaren Mein) and Yexley, Lionel (James Woods). When the Eagle Flies Seaward. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1907. 56 Anon (M, A H). Great Was the Fall. 57 Hill, H (Francis Grainger). The Spies of Wight. London: C A Pearson, 1899. 58 Seaforth, A N. (George Clarke, 1st Baron Sydenham of Combe). The Last Great Naval War. An historical retrospective. London: Cassell & Co, 1891. 59 Clowes, W L. The Captain of the Mary Rose. Tower Publishing Co, 1892. 60 Jane, Fred T. Blake of the ‘Rattlesnake’ or, The man who saved England: a story of torpedo warfare in 189-. London: Tower Publishing Company Ltd, 1895. 61 Le Queux, W. The Siege of Portsmouth. Never published in book form. About the Author Richard Freeman’s Be Very Afraid! – the scurrilous history of the invasion scare novel is available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats. His other books include Tempestuous Genius (a biography of Admiral Lord Fisher); ‘Unsinkable’: Churchill and the First World War; and his biography of Admiral Lord Charles Beresford: Admiral Insubordinate. He has previously written about the Fisher-Beresford ‘feud’ for SO