However, as Professor Clarke shows things were little different in Germany, and he includes many German stories from the same period. Titles give some idea of their author's opinions: "The Reckoning With England" (1900), "The Offensive against and Invasion of England" (1907), even "Hindenberg's March into London" as late as 1915, indicate a considerably greater invasive intent than any of the British authors, who were much more concerned with warning and preparation.

The name associated with all this is William Le Queux, who got up his fictions for Lord Northcliffe's Daily Mail. Le Queux planned massive German attacks, pincer actions and assaults on the coast of Britain, only to see Northcliffe cross them out and re-route to towns where he was making a circulation drive. Then, in one of the ironies of history, THE INVASION OF 1910 (1906) was translated and became a best-seller in Germany. However, if Le Queux enjoyed his royalties he did so without realising that his translator had changed the ending of his book, making the Germans the winners, as a book of warning on one side became a morale boost for the other.

Although military theorists of the time contributed to these works, promoting their drives for Dreadnoughts, bigger navies and places in the sun, these stories had their critics, too. It is interesting to see how the quotations from MPs complaining about German spies sketching the roads of Epping Forest were taken apart by responsible journalists, or even sent up by cartoonists such as Heath Robinson (later to draw fantastic machines, but not before he was an anti-war activist in WWI). And Professor Clarke also includes part of P.G. Wodehouse's THE SWOOP, in which boy scout, Clarence, saves England from nine invading armies. Oddly enough, in chapters XXV and XXVI of Conan Doyle's autobiography, MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES, which deals with the run up to WWI, Doyle describes how he defended Britain's preparedness on a trip to Canada: "I told the Canadians of our magnificent Boy Scout movement, and also of the movement of old soldiers to form a national guard." Which is a sad reflection on the doctor's ability to make a true diagnosis of the problem.

Ultimately, Professor Clarke says, the true analysis lay in another sphere: almost all these authors correctly predicted the participants of the war, but they could not see its transformation. That required not a tale of invasion, but of super-invasion, as H.G. Wells did in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: "With prophetic insight he foresaw that all humankind would be the victim", but as with many prophets Wells was a near lone voice and he had to speak in parables.