ABSTRACT
No further action on Control of the Press was taken however until well after the Boer War ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging in May 1902. 77 Meanwhile, wider forms of media activity had been stimulating public and political concern about the vulnerability of British interests to French and German activity. The Daily Mail had been warning about the German threat since before the Boer War, an almost lone and certainly unpopular voice, as generally France was still regarded the most likely threat. This perception was mutual; in early September 1899, for example, while Britain was completely preoccupied with events in South Africa, La Patrie published an article headed ‘Too Many English on Our Coasts’, alleging British officers were photographing/mapping parts of France near Le Havre, and criticising their authorities for allowing such espionage to continue unchecked. Journalists such as WT Stead 78 and authors such as William Le Queux 79 lectured and wrote well-publicised articles and books on this theme. Erskine Childers’ 80 ‘Riddle of the Sands’ (1903), involving German espionage, indirectly led to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl Selborne 81 tasking the NID with a study into the feasibility of an invasion of the United Kingdom; this concluded that it was not possible for such an operation to succeed. 82
