Morak, opinion, and the press. – “We cannot possibly starve the public in this way.” – Foreigners and refugees. – Churchill’s instructions and the first War Cabinet. – His statement in the Commons. – The second War Cabinet. – Churchill’s coup. – He comes through.
Let us now reverse the usual sequence of these chapters, beginning rather than ending with a survey of British morale and opinion. Throughout this period information, opinion, and even sentiment customarily lagged behind what was happening, but now there were were some indications of public opinion catching up with the military situation. Still, except for literally a few men, most people knew nothing about the conflict between Halifax and Churchill in the War Cabinet—that is, about a challenge to Churchill’s leadership and to the course that he was setting. This condition worked in Churchill’s favor. Of course, public knowledge of a division in the War Cabinet would have affected and even threatened British morale at this crucial time. In retrospect, too — and I do not mean only the retrospect of decades, including that provided by the recent availability of cabinet documents to historians — the absence of knowledge about this governmental crisis contributed to the national inclination to believe throughout this period, as well as later that summer and during the Battle of Britain, that ever since Churchill’s assumption of the prime ministership on 10 May his leadership of the nation was not only popular but unquestionable and unquestioned. Charles de Gaulle would admire Churchill’s ability “pour remuer la lourde pâte anglaise,” his capacity “to stir up the heavy English dough”: a fine Gallic phrase, referring to the power of Churchill’s speeches — but in June and July.
The people did not know what was “really” happening at Dunkirk. But by 28 May the first news about the possibility of the loss of the entire British Expeditionary Force was beginning to surface — at the very time when the tide at Dunkirk, in the direction of a more or less successful mass evacuation, was about to turn. There was, then, still a time lag; Margery Allingham recalled that day, about the desertion of the Belgian king: “Of all the blows in the wind, and there have been many, this I think was the most sudden and annihilating.” And: “Hard on the heels of Belgium came the news of Dunkirk.”1 This corresponds with the Mass-Observation report of 28 May—“all observers agree that the [Belgian] news had given people a great shock, and really shaken them up” — but “the general impression is not on the whole pessimistic, and people are still saying widely that we will pull through in the end.”2
The general Morale Survey reported “a new feature … that many people who, while making confident or other remarks, use phrases and metaphors which imply a considerable uncertainty or an admiration for Hitler’s tremendous abilities.… For many [women] he has become a secret and somewhat mystical astrological figure. Whatever he said he would do, he would do it. Low’s cartoon in the Evening Standard [of 30 May, presumably drawn one or two days before], showing Hitler in a charabanc looking across the Channel, and on the side of the machine LONDON AUGUST 18, on the back a list of other capitals and dates, each successfully ticked. Apparently intended to make Hitler look ridiculous, the unconscious effect on ordinary people was precisely the opposite.”3 Yet more important: “We do not think that people are essentially or positively apathetic. They are merely negatively apathetic, because they do not know what they ought to do or how they ought to do it and under the new Churchill leadership they still fail in many respects to conform with what might well be regarded and easily framed as minimum requirements for civilian knowledge and co-operation — e.g. knowledge of how to deal with an incendiary bomb, in its earliest stage.…There is a tendency among, for instance, people in the Ministry of Information to think that because the Government is changed, because there is a lively Minister and a lively Parliamentary Secretary, therefore, that the mass of people have been changed too.” Yet there was positive comment in the Morale Today report of 28-29 May about Minister of Information Duff Cooper’s radio speech of the twenty-
eighth: “Generally well received, and about half of the people had listened to it. Most were grateful for his frank statement of facts, and were impressed by his confident manner. General opinion was that he spoke the truth, grave though it was, and generally gave his listeners more confidence thereby.… Each time, a sympathetic and intelligent liking for his broadcasts had become more marked, and people are beginning almost to rely on him to tell them how the situation should be looked at. In this connection it is, of course, imperative that under no circumstances would he in any way ‘let them down,’ in the future, as so many leaders have done in the past.”4
The analysis in the Morale Today report of 29 May is so detailed and intelligent about the complexities of public opinion that it may be worth quoting some of it in detail. “Opinion is still very much in a state of shock as a result of the news of the Belgian surrender. Morale is, however, on the whole good. People are if anything calmer. There is no very great personal anxiety of invasion fear at the moment, but concern for the B.E.F. is growing as the realisation of the real situation grows.”
As the Belgian news came through in the early afternoon a tremendous shock was received. But even so the full realisation of the situation was not borne in on many people. In particular they were protected against facing the full facts by rather confusing broadcast and press statements to the effect that the Belgian Government had decided to carry on with its own army, etc., etc.… People continued to believe this partly because many of them do not completely understand any news or news bulletin, and partly because they wanted to believe this.…
This non-realisation is of course characteristic of every unpleasant impact on the mass of the population.
A cartoon from Punch: “Meanwhile, in Britain, the entire population, faced by the threat of invasion, has been flung into a state of complete panic.”
The subsequent analysis reported that “better off and better educated” people were, on the whole, more pessimistic, if only because of their knowledge of geography across the Channel. At the same time the Belgian surrender brought out expressions of “some wild recrimination” against the Belgian king and even, in one or two instances, against America, mostly among the less-educated classes. “As a result, the implications of the position are not as yet fully realised. Yesterday, concern for the B.E.F. was vague and personal. Today there is a growing realisation that the B.E.F. might be forced to surrender if things came to the worst. In some cases this is felt acutely.”
Tuesday, 28 May, was the first instance of such a widespread realization. And yet: “There is an unusual lack of real worry as yet today. A strong section still openly express complete confidence, though in the past few days talk about the inevitability of our victory as a walkover has steadily declined. This does not mean that people are not taking the situation seriously, but rather that it had not yet fully sunk in, and the tendency to more stable opinion (due to good leadership) noticed during the last day or two has caused people to hold themselves in check.”
The overall accuracy of these reports and assessments of public opinion and popular sentiment generally accord with whatever records we have of personal recollections of the diaries of that day.5 By coincidence, George Orwell began to keep a war diary on this very day, 28 May: “This is the first day on which newspaper posters are definitely discontinued.… Nevertheless of the early Star’s eight pages, six are devoted to racing.… I hope the B.E.F. is cut to pieces sooner than capitulate. People talk a little more of the war, but very little. As always hitherto, it is impossible to overhear any comments on it in pubs etc. Last night E [Eileen, his wife] and I went to the pub to hear the 9 o’clock news. The barmaid was not going to have turned it on if we had not asked her, and to all appearances nobody listened.”6
Orwell did not attribute this self-conscious reserve either to stupidity or to torpor. Two days later he wrote: “It is seemingly impossible for them to grasp that they are in danger, although there is good reason to think that the invasion of England may be attempted in a few days, and all the papers are saying this. [Cyril] Connolly says they will then panic, but I don’t think so.”7
On 28 May Evelyn Waugh took a day off from his post and went to London: “Arriving there I found the news of Belgian surrender on the streets together with women selling flags for Animal Day.’ … Went to Ministry of Information where Graham Greene propounded a scheme for official writers to the Forces and himself wanted to become a Marine.… I said the official writer racket might be convenient if we found ourselves permanently in a defensive role in the Far East, or if I were incapacitated and set to training. Returned to find the camp in great despondency. The Commanding Officer went to Aldershot and was told to prepare the troops for the blackest news of the BEF and to keep up their morale.”8 Harold Nicolson’s policy committee met in the morning to discuss the Belgian news: “From the purely cynical point of breaking the news to the British public this is not so bad a thing. It will at least enable them to feel that the disaster was due to Belgian cowardice as indeed to some extent it was.” Later that evening Nicolson had to make a statement in the House of Commons about the Ministry of Information’s budget estimates: “It is a strange feeling to stand at the box which Gladstone struck. I am not nervous in the least and barely conscious of anything but the job in hand, but were it not for this dull pain of war, I should have regarded it as a great moment in my life.”9
The previous night Nicolson had agreed that the whole system of war communiqués “must be altered and that we cannot possibly starve the public in this way.” On 28 and 29 May this showed some results: some of the war reportage in the newspapers became less absurd. Still, much of the news was misleading or strange. On the opinion page of the Daily Express of 28 May appeared “serious news”: “The news is grave. It grows graver every hour. There can be no pretence about the serious position of the B.E.F. in Belgium, and the French and Belgian troops with them.” (This after the Belgian surrender.) Yet the leading article in the Daily Mail was tided “Faith in Weygand”: “We still wait for Weygand. We await the moment for counter-attack.” Six days after the last feeble attempt of anything like a counterattack, this made no sense at all. A headline in the Daily Mirror: “3 RAF Aces Bag 100” (?).
One of the strangest tendencies was an encouragement of optimism about Russia — evident, independently from one another, in items in at least three newspapers. (This had a precedent in 1914, when Britain was swept by rumors about troops of their ally Russia arriving in England: people were supposed to have seen some of them with snow on their boots.) It was Halifax’s idea to accord with Sir Stafford Cripps’s wishes and name him ambassador to the Soviet Union (a disastrous choice, but that would not become evident until much later).10 The Daily Mirror on 28 May printed editorials optimistic about Russia: “We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by a trade agreement and a pact of friendship with the Soviet Union” In the News Chronicle: “Russia is certainly showing no desire at the moment to help Hitler wage his war.” This was incorrect; it showed the kind of wishful thinking (and wishful writing) that would be characteristic of at least a section of the British press after Hitler’s invasion of Russia and thereafter. On the same day the Manchester Guardian printed yet another cartoon by Low: Stalin listening carefully but willingly to Cripps, who appears as a British salesman, knocking and opening the Kremlin door—another instance of very wishful thinking. (Soon V. M. Molotov, on Stalin’s orders, would congratulate Hitler on the occasion of the German triumph over France.)
In the same Manchester Guardian: “Blackburn Mills combing, spinning and weaving yesterday at 6 A.M., instead of 7:45.… The working week is now one of 55½ hours.” “Weavers at Messrs. Taylor at Hartley’s Industrial Mills at Westburton, near Bolton, have refused to work with a conscientious objector (even though he volunteered for A.R.P. Service).” There was a considerable evidence of suspicion of aliens, too. In the News Chronicle, 28 May: “Finchley Council decided last night to dismiss the 40 aliens in Finchley civil defense” In the Daily Mail’s “Mail Bag”: “Hundreds of readers write demanding ‘much more stringent treatment of aliens’” Yet at the same time the Amateur Boxing Association cancelled that year’s championship at Wembley Pool, “now a refugee centre.” And in the News Chronicle, “Answer to Hitler: The Care of Polish Refugee Children in England.” And now an (Edwardian) period piece: “Lady Dudley’s Escape.”11
It is at this time that a brief, and necessarily incomplete, survey about the contemporary impressions of foreign observers, including refugees, may be warranted. These impressions cannot, of course, be pinpointed to the day of 28 May; they involve, rather, their reactions to the British atmosphere during the last week of May; my rapid survey of the published dispatches, memoirs, and other papers of foreign ambassadors and ministers are gleaned from that period. They were better informed than were foreign newspapermen stationed in London; the reports of the journalists of that time are not particularly interesting. We must keep in mind that the impressions of such highly placed observers are often valuable (a practice that goes back to the instructions and achievements of the ambassadors of the Venetian Republic in the sixteenth century, who were told that their thoughtful observations and their gathering of all kinds of information might be even more important than their practices of negotiations).
Generally speaking, most ambassadors and ministers posted in London were Anglophiles; many of them were sympathetic to the new Churchill government. The exception, as we have seen, was Joseph P. Kennedy, the American ambassador (a disastrous appointment by Roosevelt, who had thought that this posting of an Irish-American politician to London was a political masterpiece). So much has been written about Kennedy since then that it is easy to sum up his inclinations. He hated Churchill; he thought that the structure of the British Empire and of British society was hopelessly antiquated; he believed that National Socialism and Fascism, and Germany and Italy, were much preferable to Communism and Russia, indeed were probable bulwarks against Russia. In sum, in May 1940 (and for some time thereafter), Kennedy was a defeatist; but then Roosevelt (as well as Halifax and the Foreign Office) knew that, which is why Kennedy’s personal messages to Roosevelt were without much effect.12 The French ambassador, Charles Corbin, was deeply pessimistic, aware of the fraying ties between London and Paris; his dispatches to his government were entirely preoccupied by that matter and give few clues to his views about British morale and opinion.13 The Italian, Bastianini, was torn — or, rather, was navigating carefully—between his long-standing loyalty to Mussolini and his sympathy for what Halifax was attempting, but by 28 May he knew that the decision for war had been made in Rome. Even so, his dispatch to Rome three days later gave a perceptive account of British morale: for the first time in a week, it was definitely “up.”14 The Soviet ambassador, Ivan Maisky, was a sly personage who had for some time cultivated his relations with Churchill and the Churchillians, an approach that the latter rather unjustifiably attributed to pro-British inclinations — none of which appears in his dispatches sent to the Kremlin at the time. Franco’s ambassador to the Court of St. James’s was the Duke of Alba, an aristocrat descended from ancient British bloodlines. In May 1940 Alba’s sympathies for Churchill were not yet evident, but in his case, unlike those of some other Spanish diplomats of that period, sympathies for Germany were entirely absent. At the end of May the Danish and Belgian ministers were in a very difficult position, the former still representing a government now under German control, the latter (Cartier de Marchienne, an antique diplomatist from another age), in a most frightful dilemma between loyalty to his king and loyalty to the Belgian government, which had fled to France and was denouncing the king’s capitulation. The Polish minister, Count Edward Raczynski, was splendidly resolute. Among the neutrals the ministers of Sweden (Björn Prytz) and of Hungary (György Barcza) not only were Anglophiles but were much impressed by Churchill, and—as were other foreign observers, too — by the discipline and patriotism of the people, including the upper classes, who during the last ten days of May seemed to have accepted drastic restriction of their personal liberties and even more drastic governmental confiscations of many of their foreign assets and investments and much of their taxable income, all without a murmur.
In these last days of May 1940 Britain harbored more than 100,000 refugees, while more of them were still arriving from France. We have seen that there was considerable popular distrust of aliens. This, together with the prevalent anxiety about possible spies and so-called fifth columnists, contributed to the government’s decision to corral refugees who had come from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, interning them on the Isle of Man. This was not done for the recently arrived and currently arriving refugees from Holland, Belgium, and now from France: the French soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk were generously treated by both government and population. One of these, the fine French historian Marc Bloch, one of the first coming from Dunkirk, was much impressed by the calm and resolute discipline of the British, especially in contrast to the confusion and irresolution of French officials whom he encountered a few days later when he shipped back to France to continue in the war. The scattered reminiscences of Central European refugees, many of them Jewish, tell us little about their impressions of Britain in May 1940: they were fearful about their own future, naturally enough, and the stolidity of their hosts at times confused and distressed them. As in most other cases, their reminiscences of Britain later that summer and during the Blitz are more telling, and sometimes inspiring.
Those with some information on this day, 28 May, were still pessimistic about Dunkirk. Alexander Cadogan was present at the War Cabinet that morning. Later that day he wrote in his diary: “Prospects of the B.E.F. blacker than ever. Awful days!”15 General Pownall, Gort’s chief of staff, had some interesting thoughts about the relative caution of the Germans: “It is true that we have not had to bear the same weight or attack that was brought to bear on the others, And is it entirely by accident that the German stops when he meets us and tries to get success elsewhere, where there may be a gap, or a place defended by one or other of our allies?”16 Four years later Pownall felt compelled to write: “I shall not ever forget my feelings during the black fortnight in May, 1940, when the capture or annihilation of the entire B.E.F. seemed almost inevitable. I do not yet know how that came to be avoided.”17
Churchill himself did not think that more than fifty thousand could be lifted from Dunkirk. That morning he drafted a stern directive, marked “Strictly Confidential”: “In these dark days the Prime Minister would be grateful if all his colleagues in the Government, as well as important officials, would maintain a high morale in their circles; not minimising the gravity of events, but showing confidence in our ability and inflexible resolve to continue the war till we have broken the will of the enemy to bring all Europe under his domination. No tolerance should be given to the idea that France will make a separate peace; but whatever may happen on the Continent, we cannot doubt our duty, and we shall certainly use all our power to defend the Island, the Empire, and our Cause.”18 Churchill also minuted to General Ismay early that morning. Among other things he wrote: “If France is still our ally after an Italian declaration of war, it would appear extremely desirable that the combined Fleets, acting from opposite ends of the Mediterranean, should pursue an active offensive against Italy.… The purely defensive strategy contemplated by the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean [Andrew Browne Cunningham] ought not be accepted.… Risks must be run at this juncture in all theatres. I presume that the Admiralty have a plan in the event of France becoming neutral.”19
“Churchill himself did not think that more than fifty thousand could be lifted from Dunkirk…” The BEF arrives home, a throng of helmeted men joining the many thousands more returning to England.
We have no evidence that his enemy Hitler knew anything about the difficulty with Halifax in the War Cabinet, but Hitler still thought and hoped that the British would see the light, as he put it. That morning an important dispatch from the British ambassador to Japan, Sir Robert Craigie, was shown to the War Cabinet. The pre vious day he had met the Japanese foreign minister at lunch, who had asked Craigie “for a private talk”: “He enquired whether I do not think that Germany would soon make further peace proposals.… I think [the Japanese minister] asked for our talk particularly to convey above information, which must have reached him from some German source. I should like to encourage him in such confidences,” wrote Craigie. “I did not, however, like to question him too closely as [to the] nature of actual proposals for fear of encouraging belief that we might be prepared to listen to them.”20
The War Cabinet met at half past eleven. Most of the business dealt with the Belgian surrender. (Unlike the French and most of the British press, Churchill was not sharp in condemning King Leopold: “No doubt history would criticise the King for having involved us and the French in Belgium’s ruin. But it was not for us to pass judgment on him”) Duff Cooper, the minister of information, then pressed “for a frank statement of the desperate situation of the British Expeditionary Force. He feared that, unless this was given out, public confidence would be badly shaken and the civil population would not be ready to accept the assurances of the Government of our ultimate victory.” Churchill said that that afternoon he would make a statement in the House of Commons about what was happening in and around Dunkirk. But, he added, “it would be idle to try to forecast the success of this operation at this stage.”21
Then — and this is significant—Churchill had a private talk with Chamberlain. He asked Chamberlain whether he would agree to invite Lloyd George into the government. Both of them knew that Lloyd George was, to put it simply, defeatist; that a few years before he had spoken of Hitler in the most admiring terms; and that only a few months earlier he had said openly in Parliament that Hitler’s peace offers must be considered seriously.22 Both also knew that Lloyd George hated Chamberlain — which was why, out of loyalty, Churchill had to consult Chamberlain. This was the second time that Churchill had written to Lloyd George. (We have seen that as early as 13 May he had offered him the post of minister of agriculture.) Now Churchill wrote him again, but laying down the condition that the War Cabinet, including Chamberlain, must be unanimous in such an invitation. The letter was sent the next day.23 Lloyd George refused the offer. He would not work with Chamberlain. Of course Churchill’s main purpose was not only the strengthening of national confidence but also that of national unity. But there was also another matter behind this: if worse came to worst, … And would worse come to worst? Churchill was statesman enough to think about that too.
He went back to Admiralty House, where he had a brief lunch. He had prepared a brief statement to make in the House of Commons. He had not appeared there for a week, but he thought that such a statement about the war situation must now be made. He told the members the details of the Belgian capitulation. Again he chose (after some deliberation) not to attack the Belgian king: “I have no intention of suggesting to the House that we should attempt at this moment to pass judgment upon [him].” But the Belgian government, after fleeing to France, had disassociated itself from the king and proclaimed its continuation in the war. About that, Churchill said, “whatever our feelings may be upon the facts so far as they are known to us, we must remember that the sense of brotherhood between the many peoples who have fallen into the power of the aggressor, and those who still confront him, will play a part in better days than those through which we are passing.” Then he turned to what everyone was concerned with, the British at Dunkirk: “The troops are in good heart, and are fighting with the utmost discipline and tenacity, and I shall, of course, abstain from giving any particulars of what, with the powerful assistance of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, they are doing or hope to do. I expect to make a statement to the House on the general position when the result of the intense struggle now going on can be known and measured. This will not, perhaps, be until the beginning of next week.” (That was so: his next appearance in the House was on 4 June, after the close of the Dunkirk chapter. It was the second of his most memorable speeches, with the stirring passage that began, “We shall fight on the beaches …”) Now he ended with a fine Churchillian fillip:
Meanwhile the House should prepare itself for hard and heavy tidings. I have only to add that nothing which may happen in this battle can in any way relieve us of our duty to defend the world cause to which we have vowed ourselves; nor should it destroy our confidence in our power to make our way, as on former occasions in our history, through disaster and through grief to the ultimate defeat of our enemies.
Churchill’s speech was relatively brief. There were only two comments, one by a Labour member, H. B. Lees-Smith: “As he is to make a further statement next week this is not the time for any discussion at all. I will, therefore, confine myself to a single observation. Whatever he may have to tell us in the next few days or weeks or months, we have not yet touched the fringe of the resolution of this country.” The other comment was made by Sir Percy Harris, a Liberal: “All I want to say is that the dignified statement of the Prime Minister reflects not only the feeling of the whole House but the feeling of the whole nation.”24 Fine words, and not without substance; yet, concerning the phrase “the feeling of the whole House,” it is perhaps of interest that no Conservative members chose to speak. In any event, Churchill was heartened by what the Labour member had said: “We have not yet touched the fringe of the resolution of this country.”
But was this “not the time for any discussion” at all? Not in the House, surely; but there was the War Cabinet and Halifax. Churchill had asked the War Cabinet to meet in one of the rooms of the House of Commons, for convenience’s sake, he said. This was undoubtedly so, but he also had something else in mind. Thither he now went, where the War Cabinet session opened at four o’clock. Then and there the battle between Halifax and Churchill broke out anew.
The Foreign Secretary said that Sir Robert Vansittart25 had now discovered what the Italian Embassy had in mind, namely, that we should give a clear indication that we should like to see mediation by Italy.
The Prime Minister said that it was clear that the French purpose was to see Signor Mussolini acting as intermediary between ourselves and Herr Hitler. He was determined not to get into this position.
The Foreign Secretary said that the proposal which had been discussed with M. Reynaud on Sunday had been as follows: that we should say that we were prepared to fight to the death for our independence, but that, provided this could be secured, there were certain concessions that we were prepared to make to Italy.
The Prime Minister thought that the French were trying to get us on to the slippery slope. The position would be entirely different when Germany had made an unsuccessful attempt to invade this country.…
The Foreign Secretary said that we must not ignore the fact that we might get better terms before France went out of the war and our aircraft factories were bombed, than we might get in three months’ time.
The various possibilities now under development of countering night-bombing were referred to.
The Prime Minister then read out a draft which expressed his views. To him the essential point was that M. Reynaud wanted to get us to the Conference table with Herr Hitler. If we once got to the table, we should then find that the terms offered us touched our independence and integrity. When, at this point, we got up to leave the Conference-table, we should find that all the forces of resolution which were now at our disposal would have vanished. M. Reynaud had said that if he could save the independence of France, he would continue the fight. It was clear, therefore, that M. Reynaud’s aim was to end the war.26
The Foreign Secretary said that M. Reynaud also wanted the Allies to address an appeal to the President of the United States.
The Prime Minister thought that a paragraph might be added to the draft outlined by the Lord President [Chamberlain] to the effect that we were ready in principle to associate ourselves with such an appeal.
The Minister without Portfolio [Greenwood] thought that M. Reynaud was too much inclined to hawk around appeals. This was another attempt to run out.
The Prime Minister said that he came back to the point that the French wanted to get out of the war, but did not want to break their Treaty obligations to us. Signor Mussolini, if he came in as mediator, would take his whack out of us. It was impossible to imagine that Herr Hitler would be so foolish as to let us continue our re-armament. In effect, his terms would put us completely at his mercy. We should get no worse terms if we went on fighting, even if we were beaten, than were open to us now. If, however, we continued the war and Germany attacked us, no doubt we would suffer some damage, but they would also suffer severe losses. Their oil supplies might be reduced. A time might come when we felt that we had to put an end to the struggle, but the terms would not then be more mortal than those offered to us now.
The Foreign Secretary said that he still did not see what there was in the French suggestion of trying out the possibilities of mediation which the Prime Minister felt so wrong.
The Lord President [Chamberlain] said that, on a dispassionate survey, it was right to remember that the alternative to fighting on nevertheless involved a considerable gamble. The War Cabinet agreed that this was a true statement of the case.
The Prime Minister said that the nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished.
The Minister without Portfolio [Greenwood] said that any course which we took was attended by great danger. The line of resistance was certainly a gamble, but he did not feel that this was a time for ultimate capitulation.
The Foreign Secretary said that nothing in his suggestion could even remotely be described as ultimate capitulation.
The Prime Minister thought that the chances of decent terms being offered to us at the present were a thousand to one against.27
It was now five o’clock. It was at this moment that Churchill resorted to what some have called his coup. He asked the War Cabinet to adjourn momentarily and to resume their meeting at seven. He had arranged to address the members of the entire cabinet (the Outer Cabinet as contrasted with the five men of the War Cabinet). This took place in his room in the House of Commons. It took about an hour. Churchill’s resolution impressed and swayed all of them. We have seen his own account and Hugh Dalton’s account of this in the first pages of this book. The decisive matter in Churchill’s peroration came at the end. Churchill admitted (if that is the proper verb) that he had been thinking about whether it “was his duty to consider negotiations” with Hitler. But, he had concluded, “it was idle to think that, if we tried to make peace now, we should get better terms from Germany than if we went on and fought it out. The Germans would demand our fleet — that would be called ‘disarmament’—our naval bases, and much else. We should become a slave state, though a British government which would be Hitler’s puppet would be set up — “under Mosley or some such person.’ And where should we be at the end of all that?” Herbert Morrison, a Labour minister, “asked about evacuation of the Government, and hoped that it would not be hurried. The PM said Certainly not, he was all against evacuation unless things really became utterly impossible in London, ‘but mere bombing will not make us go.’”28
There are two considerations that argue against the interpretation crediting Churchill for having prepared a coup by such a gathering of his longtime supporters. It was proper for him to speak to the entire cabinet at the time, having not met with most of them for more than a week. More important is the fact that the Outer Cabinet consisted of twenty-nine or thirty ministers of whom at least a dozen (if not more) were Conservatives, inherited from the previous Chamberlain government. New members of the cabinet, and Churchillians, amounted to no more than another dozen. Yet, as Dalton recalled, “No one expressed even the faintest flicker of dissent” We do not know who exactly or how many went up to Churchill at the end of the meeting, patting him on the back. It did not matter. Churchill was more than encouraged; he now knew that he would have his way.
Less than an hour after the other ministers dispersed, Churchill returned to the War Cabinet. This last meeting opened at seven. It was a brief session. Churchill told them what had just happened with the other ministers: “They had not expressed alarm at the position in France, but had expressed the greatest satisfaction when he had told them that there was no chance of our giving up the struggle. He did not remember having ever before heard a gathering of persons occupying high places in political life express themselves so emphatically.”
Halifax now thought that he could not demur. He only referred to Reynaud’s proposed appeal to Roosevelt.
Churchill “thought that an appeal to the United States at the present time would be altogether premature. If we made a bold stand against Germany, that would command their admiration and respect; but a grovelling appeal, if made now, would have the worst possible effect. He therefore did not favour making any approach on the subject at the present time.”29
That was the end of it. He had worn down Halifax. Churchill left for Admiralty House, where he dined at half past eight and then drafted a late-night telegram to Reynaud. He told him that the War Cabinet had agreed: there was no reason to offer concessions to Mussolini now.30
That was the end of it. As Andrew Roberts properly wrote: “Churchill’s instincts proved correct. Halifax had attempted to bring logic and reason to a problem long since devoid of either.… Halifax was right that there was nothing particularly patriotic in adopting a ‘death or glory’ attitude if the odds were on the former, any more than there was anything treacherous about attempting honourably to shorten a war Britain was clearly losing.”31 That is the best one can — and should — say about Halifax. But Churchill’s best was — and proved to be — better than that.32
