216 
LUPTON: CHANNEL TUNNEL. 
the tunnel should pay well. The cost of the London and North 
Western Railway is about £60,000 a mile, which at present prices 
of stocks ;is worth about £105,000 a mile. Taking the cost of the 
tunnel and approaches at £5,000,000 and the ieng-th of the tunnel 
and approaches included at 31 miles (the approaches costing- per 
mile much less than the tunnel), it equals about £161,000 a mile; 
when the great length of comparatively unprofitable line possessed 
by the London and North Western Railway Co. is considered, and 
the fact that all the railway systems of two great countries will 
converge at the tunnel, there can be no doubt that the expenditure 
will be profitable from a commercial point of view. 
AVith well-built and well-lighted carriages, the journey will be 
at least as pleasant and safe as travelling at night is on an ordinary 
railway, and there can be no doubt at all that the passenger traffic 
between England and the Continent will be enormously increased ; 
the dread of sea sickness is a real and widely operative cause for 
people stopping at home, both with Englishmen and foreigners. 
I The only real objection to the tunnel is the danger in case of 
war ; the danger is not of soldiers coming' through in the first 
instance, but of a landing from ships of a large army which would 
seize the tunnel head and then be able to obtain supplies and 
reinforcements which our fleet would be powerless to stop. It is, 
however, possible to diminish if not to destroy this danger, by 
constructing near the entrance to the tunnel a fort of iron or steel, 
which should be absolutely impregnable and armed with powerful 
cannon. A garrison of 1,000 men would be sufficient to man a steel 
fort 100 feet high and 100 feet in diameter, which would have deep 
cellars in the I'ocks containing ample stores of all kinds and accomo- 
dation for the men. 
An army of 50,000 men would vainly strive to take a fort of 
steel whose entrances would only open to pour forth a withering 
fire from monster ordnance directed to the tunnel, or opposing- 
batteries, or from rifles, or machine guns, directed by carefully 
chosen men who would be absolutely protected from the enemy's 
fire ; the fort would also be assisted by the fleet ; because unless 
our fleet had the command of the channel, the enemy would not 
