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K.C.B., Director-General of Intelligence, Colonel P. H. N. Lake, C.B., Assistant Quartermaster-General for Mobilisation, and Major-General Sir John Ardagh, K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., Director of Military Intelligence from 1896 to 1901, were unanimously of opinion that England could never be the subject of a surprise invasion—the very kind of invasion which Lord Roberts would have us believe to be imminent. The first-named officer held that the British Government, under the most unfavourable circumstances must have at least two months' warning of the projected attack^[1]; the second, that fourteen days was the period in which the final preparations for embarking 100,000 men could be completed—" fourteen days," as he expressed it, "from the time when you say, "Now I do not mind who knows [what] I am doing'"^[2] the third put the maximum

1. Blue Book, vol. i. p. 12 [Cd. 2062] of 1904.
2. Ibid. pp. 104, 105.