The PREFACE

"BOYS, you know the wonderful tale of the Tower of Babel, of how, early in Mosaic history, men in their pride, who dwelt in the plains of Shinar, determined to build unto themselves a great Tower, the top of which should reach to Heaven, where they hoped to learn all secrets and be as gods. And you know what happened.

Well, the story of Babel may be merely allegorical—with that hypothesis I have nothing to do. But will you be surprised when I tell you that a real Tower of Babel is being built, and is getting higher and higher every day ? And this great Tower is the Tower of Science.

Most thinking men now believe in the infinity of Science, and of everything that is good. Only the evil shall perish as the world gets older. And u-ntil this world collides with some dark star and is consumed by fervid heat, or until it becomes a dead, dry world like the moon, this Tower of Science will go on being added to.

We have, at present, some terrible instruments of warfare, such as submarines. Well, my story is of the years 1980 and 1981. The submarine is at present but a toy compared to what it may be then, and will be capable of even greater achievements than I ascribe to it in this book.

Speed of warships is another branch of science which is steadily advancing, and we will doubtless have warships in the future such as the typhoonoids from which it is already said a speed of goo miles an hour will be obtainable. In this book I call them Narwhals. They will be invincible—for a time, till Science comes forward with some still more terrible invention.

But in the arts of peace, as in the arts of war, the Tower of Science is ever, ever rising, and the architects thereof, like moles, seeking neither honour nor glory, work alone in secret and in silence.

This is not the place in which to discuss the probability of an invasion of Britain. I consider it a certainty, and I am not the only one who does so. It is a certainty, I say, if we do not have a standing army of defence.

As a journalist — very largely syndicated — for over fifteen years, I have done all I could to uphold the Boys' Brigade, and the Church Brigade, but there must be also a School Brigade. Rifle-shooting should be the pet recreation with every school lad in the land.

As to our volunteers—and I have had the honour of being a full private in that army—the Government have smashed them. But they must and
shall rise again.

Says Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, K.G., writing in The Nineteenth Century :—
" I maintain that it is the bounden duty of the State to see that every able-bodied man in this countryy, no matter in what grade of society he may belong, undergoes some kind of military training in his youth sufficient to enable him to shoot straight and carry simple orders if ever his services are needed for the national defence."

The eastern and northern shores of Scotland seem to invite invasion, and if we do not take warning and prepare, the fate of Aberdeen, the largest and most beautiful city in the far north, is sealed from the first day war breaks out between this country and any three European powers. Two hundred thousand people without a fort or ship to defend them. Think of it, and think of the ghastly horrors that will in an hour's time follow the landing of an enemy on the links of Aberdeen. May God avert so terrible a calamity!

THE AUTHOR.

The Jungle, TWYFORD,
Berks "

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