The Invasion of 1910

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The Invasion of 1910

(William Le Queux)

The Invasion of 1910 is a book with a rather curious history. It was written in 1906 and rapidly became famous – and notorious – as the greatest of the pre-WW1 invasion literature books, a genre that had started with the famous The Battle of Dorking and included such interesting works as The War of the Worlds and the less serious The Swoop. It has also been out of print for years, but I was recently able to order a copy from a booksellers, whereupon I proceeded to read it with the benefit of nearly a centuries worth of hindsight.

The book itself is written very much as a campaign history-style book; readers of David Downing’s The Moscow Option would not find too much different in this book. Part of the novel consists of characters who say their parts, take a bow and exit stage left, other parts are excerpts from journals, letters and so on by the fictional participants, and finally descriptions of the campaign itself. In some ways, it is like reading a good history book, although the history of a fictional war. This style can get a little confusing at times and warrants a re-read to understand just what is going on.

But enough of the style; the book itself is centred around a major raid by the Germans, who have managed to land a major invasion force along the east coast of Britain, cutting all the telegraph poles and advancing as far as they can into Britain before they meet something powerful enough to stop them. As the British struggle to get a proper defence in place – the book endlessly bemoans the failure of the government to prepare for a possible invasion – the Germans advance, despoiling the land as they go. (One thing that isn’t mentioned in the book is rape, owing to the time period it was actually written, although IIRC several Prussians were accused of rape during the Franco-Prussian War.) The Germans eventually penetrate London itself and occupy half the city, until a massive resistance in the city itself and a newly-formed British Army advance to liberate the city. Owing to poor preparations for war, the Germans cannot be removed from their European conquests (Belgium and the Netherlands have been occupied, as would happen in 1914 and 1940) and the war effectively stalemates.

The first thing that springs to mind, reading it, is just how blatantly William Le Queux pushed a political agenda. I have read complaints directed at Tom Kratman for doing the same thing, when William Le Queux was far more blatant than anything Tom Kratman ever wrote. Throughout the first sections of the book, the refrain "they should have listened to Lord Roberts" is sounded frequently, along with endless references to his patriotism and lack of any drum to beat. Lord Roberts scheme for introducing widespread compulsory military training might have prevented the invasion from coming anywhere near to success, but unless this included major and widespread distribution of arms as well, it is doubtful that it would have made that much of a difference in the early stages. The author wrote, himself, that the object of his forecast was to "bring home to the British public vividly and forcibly what really would occur were an enemy suddenly to appear in our midst." The surprise caused by the invasion might not have been changed if every able-bodied male had military training.

The second thing is that the book changes from doom and gloom to heroic predictions somewhere through the middle. A junior MP, who is apparently highly regarded by his fellow MPs, proclaims that ‘Britain is not defeated’ and promptly begins to organise a ‘League of Defenders’ to promote resistance behind the lines, despite gross German reprisals and severe shortages of weapons. The Germans seem to be unable to come to grips with this problem, and as they try to tighten their grip on London, suddenly find themselves in the midst of an angry population. Somehow, this angry population is controllable to the point where they don’t slaughter every German, despite the more than ample provocation…and a battle which made Stalingrad and Fallujah look nice and civilised.

The book is, in its own way, more of a paranoid look at a possible future than anything else. The Germans are sneaky people who don’t hesitate to take advantage of mistakes made in Britain’s defences to land an army; quite understandable, maybe, but I don’t think that they would gloat to the captives about it. There were mistakes in British defences that came back to haunt the country during WW1, but in the end, the Germans couldn’t do more than bombard coastal towns. Other predictions were very accurate, from the German attack on neutral countries to the use of balloons for aerial reconnaissance, and the near-obsolete nature of horsemen.

One thing that he did get wrong, sharply, was the state of German intelligence. Although he claimed that there were five thousand German spies operating within England – and some of them appeared in the book, rather like Japanese spies in Russian territory, pre-1904 – the real state of German intelligence was limited. British counter-espionage agents were able to round them up and turn them at the beginning of war, along with cracking German codes and other intelligence ploys.

Compared to some of the books from that period, this one really deserves a read. It’s a shame that it is out of serious print.

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