''Danger! And Other Stories'' is a collection of short stories by

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for '' A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...

published in 1918.

*"Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius" *"One Crowded Hour" *"A Point of View" *"The Fall of Lord Barrymore" *" The Horror of the Heights" *"Borrowed Scenes" *"The Surgeon of Gaster Fell" *"How It Happened" *"The Prisoner's Defence" *"Three of Them"

Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius

The collection's title story was (the preface notes) written 18 months before the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, and first published in the '' Strand Magazine'' in July 1914. It depicts a hypothetical scenario in which a small, fictional European country manages to defeat the United Kingdom by innovative naval strategy using a new technology, the practical combat submarine. The story is a late example of the genre of

invasion literature Invasion literature (also the invasion novel) is a literary genre that was popular in the period between 1871 and the First World War (1914–1918). The invasion novel first was recognized as a literary genre in the UK, with the novella '' The ...

, cautionary tales in which the British are caught unprepared by a continental enemy, often a stand-in for Germany (notable examples being Erskine Childers' ''

The Riddle of the Sands ''The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service'' is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influenti ...

'' and

Saki Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and cultu ...

's ''

When William Came ''When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns'' is a novel written by the British author Saki (the pseudonym of Hector Hugh Munro) and published in November 1913. It is set several years in what was then the future, after a war b ...

''.)

Plot

The small nation of Norland has been somewhat reluctantly drawn into war with Britain by a violent colonial incident. The Norland navy - while professional - is quite small, and wholly inadequate for a confrontation with the might of the Royal Navy. However, Norland possesses a flotilla of eight modern submarines, which captain John Sirius requests be placed under his command. Sirius uses the submarines to mount a naval blockade around the

British Isles The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, ...

, destroying incoming food-laden freighters. The British experience rapid, enormous increases in the cost of basic staples, which soon turn into famine and massive social unrest. In the climax of the story, Sirius demonstrates that the British navy is unable to stop him by torpedoing the RMS ''Olympic'' off Liverpool. The humiliated British are forced to sue for terms.

Analysis

Norland is depicted as a North European country, with a shore on the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the ...

. While linguistically Germanic - "

Norrland Norrland (, "Northland", originally ''Norrlanden'' or "the Northlands") is the northernmost, largest and least populated of the three traditional lands of Sweden, consisting of nine provinces. Although Norrland does not serve any administ ...

" and " Nordland" are the names of a region in Sweden and a county in Norway, respectively, and Norland's main port is Blankenberg, the name of several actual German cities - it is however explicitly ''not'' Germany, which remains neutral in the war (though Germans are depicted as sympathetic to Norland's cause.) Norland has a colonial empire; and a border dispute with a British colony - exacerbated by the deaths of two missionaries, and the desecration of a British flag - is the direct cause of the war. It is also a monarchy, whose monarch seems to retain actual executive power; the crucial policy meeting in which it is resolved to defy a British ultimatum and embark on submarine warfare is attended by the king, the foreign secretary, an admiral, and Captain Sirius; a prime minister is conspicuously absent. The story correctly anticipates the

U-boat U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare ro ...

strategy, which Germany would use in both World Wars to target foodstuffs Britain was unable to produce domestically. It also forecast that attackers would have to target American ships bringing supplies to Britain, and that the British would have to introduce

rationing Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, services, or an artificial restriction of demand. Rationing controls the size of the ration, which is one's allowed portion of the resources being distributed on a particular ...

. Unusually in the invasion literature genre, the story is narrated in first person by Captain Sirius, the victorious enemy commander; while he is portrayed as a professional soldier who does not delight in killing, his chauvinism and veiled contempt for the UK were clearly intended to evoke a patriotic reaction from British readers. Ironically, the work may have led to the thing it was warning against. The work was read by naval officers in Germany, including

Alfred von Tirpitz Alfred Peter Friedrich von Tirpitz (19 March 1849 – 6 March 1930) was a German grand admiral, Secretary of State of the German Imperial Naval Office, the powerful administrative branch of the German Imperial Navy from 1897 until 1916. Prussi ...

, who cited it as influential on his thinking. Admiral

Eduard von Capelle Admiral Eduard von Capelle (10 October 1855 – 23 February 1931) was a German Imperial Navy officer from Celle. He served in the navy from 1872 until his retirement in October, 1918. During his career, Capelle served in the ''Reichsmarin ...

testified before the Reichstag that

Gentlemen, it is well known that there was published in England before the war a pamphlet which described U-boat warfare in an absolutely masterly manner and which attracted a great deal of attention. This was a pamphlet written by Conan Doyle. According to this pamphlet, a successful U-boat war was carried on against England, by eight U-boats.

The Horror of the Heights

The collection also includes this pioneering science fiction story, one of Doyle's most frequently anthologized short pieces, in which an aviator discovers an invisible ecosystem of translucent lifeforms floating in the upper atmosphere, including bizarre and terrible predators.

References

External links