The Project Gutenberg eBook, Danger! and Other Stories, by Arthur Conan
Doyle

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Danger! and Other Stories

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Release Date: August 19, 2007 [eBook #22357]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGER! AND OTHER STORIES***

Transcribed from the 1918 John Murray edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

DANGER!
AND OTHER STORIES

BY ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

AUTHOR OF
"THE WHITE COMPANY," "SIR NIGEL"
"RODNEY STONE," ETC.

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1918

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE

The Title story of this volume was written about eighteen months before
the outbreak of the war, and was intended to direct public attention to
the great danger which threatened this country. It is a matter of
history how fully this warning has been justified and how, even down to
the smallest details, the prediction has been fulfilled. The writer
must, however, most thankfully admit that what he did not foresee was the
energy and ingenuity with which the navy has found means to meet the new
conditions. The great silent battle which has been fought beneath the
waves has ended in the repulse of an armada far more dangerous than that
of Spain.

It may be objected that the writer, feeling the danger so strongly,
should have taken other means than fiction to put his views before the
authorities. The answer to this criticism is that he did indeed adopt
every possible method, that he personally approached leading naval men
and powerful editors, that he sent three separate minutes upon the danger
to various public bodies, notably to the Committee for National Defence,
and that he touched upon the matter in an article in _The Fortnightly
Review_. In some unfortunate way subjects of national welfare are in
this country continually subordinated to party politics, so that a self-
evident proposition, such as the danger of a nation being fed from
without, is waved aside and ignored, because it will not fit in with some
general political shibboleth. It is against this tendency that we have
to guard in the future, and we have to