1940: Great Britain

The story of Great Britain in 1940 is the story of a nation at war, of a people whose life and every activity were conditioned by the war that had been in progress just under four months when the year opened. This account will deal first with matters that would normally be considered even were Great Britain at peace, and secondly with the course and progress of the war as it affects Great Britain. (See also EUROPEAN WAR.)

England, Scotland, and Wales, which together make up the island of Great Britain, have an area of 88,745 square miles inhabited by a population which at the last decennial census taken in 1931 numbered 44,937,444 persons. This included the Isle of Man, with an area of 221 square miles, and the Channel Islands — Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark — with an area of 75 square miles. These last, which were originally part of the duchy of Normandy and remained in the possession of the king of England when the duchy was annexed to the kingdom of France early in the 13th century, fell into German hands in July 1940. About a fourth of their population, mainly French speaking, had earlier been evacuated to England. The principality of Wales was incorporated into England in the year 1284. The two kingdoms of England and Scotland were united as the kingdom of Great Britain in the year 1707; they have had the same sovereign since 1603, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England. Politically, Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom, for, although the constitution of Eire states that 'the national territory consists of the whole of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas,' that claim is restricted by a later provision that confines the laws of Eire to the 'area and extent . . . of the Free State.' The six northern counties still have, by this provision, their own government, and are represented in the British Parliament by thirteen members.

Government.

The Parliament of Great Britain is bicameral. The House of Lords, with a membership of about 740 but a somewhat smaller voting strength, is composed of (a) peers who hold their seats by hereditary right, (b) peers who are elected to the House, and (c) peers who are members of the House by virtue of their office. The House of Commons has 615 members who are elected by universal suffrage. Clergymen of the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and the Roman Catholic Church are ineligible. The life of a Parliament is not for any fixed term, save that five years is the maximum; but Parliament is competent to prolong its own life, and, during the former World War, that step was taken, to avoid the turmoil and confusion of a general election, by the very Parliament that had passed the Act limiting its life to five years. This precedent was followed in October 1940, to prolong for one year the Parliament which would otherwise have expired on Nov. 25.

The sharp line of cleavage between the executive and the legislative branches of the Government does not exist in Great Britain. Responsible government there means a government responsible to the legislature; and the administration, that is to say, 'the Government' or the Cabinet, is in reality a parliamentary committee. Except when emergency calls a coalition cabinet into existence, the Cabinet is made up solely of members of that party which has a majority in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister is the elected Head of the majority party. Cabinet unanimity means in practice that all members of the Cabinet must agree with the Prime Minister, whose position has come to be so important that it may properly be maintained that an English general election is virtually the election of a Prime Minister. The part played by the Opposition is fully recognized, and the leader of the Opposition in Parliament is paid a salary. When a coalition Cabinet is formed, the ministers who belong to the minority parties abandon their role of His Majesty's Opposition to become members of His Majesty's Government.

The year 1940 was only a few days old when, on Jan. 6, the Secretary for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha, resigned because of disagreement with the then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Hore-Belisha had shown himself an unusually vigorous and able minister; he was popularly given the credit for marked improvements in the army, and his resignation, generally regarded as a dismissal, aroused a storm of controversy. The President of the Board of Trade, Oliver Stanley, went to the War Office; his place was taken by Sir Andrew Rae Duncan, a shipping expert. At the same time the Minister of Information, Lord Macmillan, resigned and was succeeded by Sir John Reith, recently head of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Of a full score of cabinet ministers, eight belonged to the so-called War Cabinet: the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Secretary for War, the Secretary for Air, the Lord Privy Seal, and one minister without portfolio. All these were members of the Conservative Party. There was some reshuffling of cabinet posts at the outbreak of the war, but the Opposition had been offered no portfolio whose holder would be a member of the War Cabinet, and there was no coalition government formed. A party truce was declared so far as parliamentary elections were concerned, but that was all.

Three months after Hore-Belisha's resignation, on April 3, there was a rearrangement of ministerial positions with scarcely any change in the personnel. In the War Cabinet the Lord Privy Seal, Sir Samuel Hoare, changed places with the Secretary for Air, Sir Kingsley Wood. On May 10, 1940, Neville Chamberlain resigned the prime ministership, which led to the formation of a new government under the leadership of Winston Churchill, the most dynamic figure to come into English public life for over two decades. Chamberlain's resignation was the result of strenuous opposition to his handling of affairs. Lloyd George had characterized Chamberlain's policy as 'faulty, feeble, and foolish'; Herbert Morrison, Labourite M.P., and member of the London County Council, had declared publicly that Chamberlain, his Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his Air Secretary were 'primarily responsible for the relative weakness of our war effort'; and even members of the Conservative Party felt and stated that a change in administration was an immediate necessity. Chamberlain's attempt to strengthen his position by offering seats in the Cabinet to the Labour and Liberal Parties was a failure; he admitted to the House that a National Government — a coalition, that is — could be formed under another Prime Minister but not under himself; and he placed his resignation in the King's hands. His only possible successor was Winston Churchill.

At the end of the week the new Prime Minister announced his reorganized Cabinet. The War Cabinet was made up of Churchill, who assumed the portfolio of Minister of Defence; C. R. Atlee, a Labourite who became Lord Privy Seal; the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Halifax; Arthur Greenwood, a member of the Labour Party who became minister without portfolio; and Neville Chamberlain as Lord President of the Council. The inclusion of Chamberlain in the War Cabinet was presumably because of the measure of support he still retained in the Conservative Party. His office, like that of Atlee, was a sinecure. This meant that three members of the War Cabinet (the third being Greenwood) were free from any administrative duties and could in consequence devote their whole time to problems connected directly with the prosecution of the war. This was in line with the precedent of the former World War, and a notable improvement over the so-called War Cabinet of the Chamberlain administration. Of other changes in the ministry effected by Churchill, the principal was the removal from office of Sir John Simon and Sir Samuel Hoare. On Oct. 1, Chamberlain resigned from the ministry because of ill health; his post as Lord President of the Council was taken by Sir John Anderson. At the same time the War Cabinet was enlarged to eight members. Two weeks later Winston Churchill was unanimously elected Leader of the Conservative Party, a place which, at Churchill's request, Chamberlain had continued to hold after his resignation from the premiership. Mr. Chamberlain's death on Nov. 9 removed a sincere and patriotic statesman unable to cope with existing desperate conditions. (See also SOCIALISM.)

Unemployment.

The figures of unemployment for the months of the year 1940 for which they were made public showed a marked improvement over the figures for 1939, an improvement that may be attributed mainly to war work. The figures which give the total number of registered unemployed persons between the ages of 16 and 64 are taken about the middle of each month, anywhere from the 11th to the 17th. On Dec. 11, 1939, the total number of the unemployed was 1,361,526. On Aug. 12, 1940, the number stood at 799,452. Clearly, there was less unemployment in Great Britain in 1940 than for many years, due probably to war manufactures; yet it was unfortunately true that in certain occupations there was no improvement.

Exports and Imports.

The war had a profound effect on British foreign trade. In January 1940 exports, valued in round numbers at £41,000,000, were the largest since May 1939, and the re-exports, worth £3,657,000, were the largest since August. The total came to about the figure for January 1939; but then the imports had amounted to £75,570,000, whereas in January 1940, the imports were £104,061,000. In the first ten months of the year, July had the lowest figure for exports — £31,154,000, with September almost a tie, when the figure was £31,177,000. The imports ranged from a low of £79,263,000 in September, to a high of £105,600,000 in May. In comparison with the figures for the preceding year, the first nine months of 1940 showed an adverse balance of £506,000,000 as against an adverse balance of £280,500,000 in the same months of 1939. For this contrast, the war was directly responsible. The German occupation of Belgium, The Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries took away British markets; so, too, did the defeat of France, and Italy's entrance into the war. Even the destruction of the vast military stores that the British army had to abandon when it was withdrawn from the Continent deserves mention in this connection, for one immediate result was to turn British manufacturers to the production of new material to replace that loss rather than to make goods for export to foreign markets. The figures for October showed a decline in exports and an increase in imports over the previous month; the domestic exports were £23,390,911, the imports £85,095,565, and there were re-exports to the value of £966,746. It should be noted that freight and insurance charges add to the cost of imports but not to the value of exports. For an approximation of these and other financial figures in terms of American currency, the pound sterling may be estimated at $4.00; throughout the year 1940 the quotation was almost continuously $4.02½. (See also WORLD ECONOMICS.)

Finances.

When the Government's fiscal year ended on March 30, there was a budget deficit of £767,685,000, incurred during five months of peace and seven months of war. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, presented his second war budget (which was his first full year war budget) on April 23. Expenditures were estimated at £2,667,000,000, of which Sir John planned to borrow £1,433,000,000, and to raise the rest by taxation. New taxes were proposed, to bring in a yield estimated at £101,000,000. As had been announced at the time of the introduction of the emergency war budget in September, the base rate of income tax was increased from 7s. to 7s. 6d. (from 35 per cent to 37½ per cent). A new surtax, the amount of which had not then been fixed, was foretold for yearly incomes of more than £1,500. Post office charges were sharply increased: postage for domestic letters to be 2½d. and for postal cards 2d.; and extra charge of 3d. on all telegrams, and a 15 per cent increase in telephone rates. (The telegraph and telephone are Government-owned and operated in Great Britain.) The excise tax on tobacco was increased by 3d. an ounce; that on beer 1d. a pint; that on whiskey and spirits 15s. a gallon or 1s. 9d. a bottle; and ½d. a box on matches. The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that he intended to impose a purchase tax, the details of which had not yet been worked out, on all wholesaler-retailer transactions.

The third war budget was introduced in July by Sir Kingsley Wood, who had succeeded Simon at the Exchequer. In April, expenses had been assumed to be about £40,000,000 a week; by July there had been a rise to about £50,000,000 a week; indeed for the four weeks ended July 20, they were nearer £57,000,000 weekly. The cost of the war had been estimated in Simon's April budget at £2,000,000,000; in July this figure was increased by £800,000,000. The total cost of government was figured at £3,476,000,000. By this July budget, the base rate of income tax was further increased to 8s. 6d. (42½ per cent); the surtax was raised by 9d. in the pound for incomes of between £2,000 and £20,000; and from there moved by grades to 18s. (90 per cent). Income tax on salaries and wages is deducted at source. While the base rate is 8s. 6d., the tax on the first £165-yearly income is only 5s. in the pound or 25 per cent. Excise taxes were further increased in this budget: on tobacco by 1½d. an ounce, on beer by 1d. a pint, with 2s. a gallon tax added on light wines and 4s. a gallon on heavy wines. In place of his predecessor's purchase tax Sir Kingsley Wood provided a sales tax that he estimated would bring in a return of £110,000,000. This is a tax of 33 per cent wholesale (equivalent to about 24 per cent retail) on luxuries, and 16 per cent wholesale on other goods. There are certain exemptions — food, fuel, and children's clothing. When on Oct. 16 the House of Commons voted an additional £1,000,000,000, it was stated that the war costs were then somewhat more than £9,000,000 a day; of this £7,500,000 was for the fighting services, for the cost of total war goes far beyond the amount expended in military and naval effort. From around £40,000,000 in the early months of the year, to £57,000,000 in July, to £63,000,000 in October, the increased and increasing weekly costs of the war threw an enormously heavy burden on the British tax-payer. (See also INTERNATIONAL BANKING AND FINANCE, and TAXATION: Taxation in Leading Foreign Nations.)

Rationing.

Far less serious than the piling up of taxes, yet effective enough as a reminder to the average civilian that war-time brings changes and restrictions in everyday life, was the rationing that started on Jan. 8. The restrictions were not serious, yet they were noticeable. A weekly limit of 4 ounces of bacon or boneless ham, 4 ounces of butter, and 12 ounces of sugar for each person was imposed, with the proviso that additional sugar would be allowed for preserving. Great Britain uses 2,250,000 tons of sugar a year; and it was estimated that this restriction would reduce the amount to 1,750,000 tons. Coupons were not required for getting ham or bacon at eating places. A little later in the month the Government instructed British tobacco manufacturers to stop importing American tobacco. The reason was, first, that which lay behind the restrictions placed on the use of sugar — to save valuable space on freighters; and secondly, to economize on the purchase of American exchange. It was said that existing stocks of American tobacco in Great Britain were enough to supply two and a half years' normal demand. The next month the bacon and ham allowance was increased; and there had been some fluctuation in the rationing. A restriction that was felt much more in England than it would be in America was the rationing of tea, which in July was restricted to 2 ounces a week for each person. Meat rationing was announced in February and became operative in March: each person over six years of age was permitted meat to the value of 1s. 10d. (about 36 cents a week); 11d. a week for persons under six. As everyone who has traveled in England knows, one can almost always and almost everywhere get good fish, so the sharp restrictions on meat eating were not so bad as they sound. In July, hotels and restaurants were forbidden to serve meat and fish at the same meal. At the same time there was a further endeavor to save sugar by restricting the output of confectionery and forbidding icing on cakes. So far as can be ascertained, there is no grave shortage of food in Great Britain, nor lack of variety. To destroy or throw away food that is fit for consumption is an offence that is punishable and has been punished; and the rationing makes a daily difference in the diet of multitudes of English folk; but there seems to be no reason to believe that more persons are suffering from under-nourishment in Britain now than is normally the case.

Internment of Aliens and Fifth Columnists.

One matter on which the Government has been severely criticized has been its treatment of aliens, particularly of enemy aliens who, in fact, are refugees from Germany or Nazi-dominated countries in continental Europe. At the beginning of June a curfew law went into effect for all aliens over sixteen years of age. They must be in their homes between 10:30 o'clock in the evening (12 midnight in London) and 6 o'clock in the morning. Also, without a police permit, no alien may have any bicycle, motor vehicle, seagoing craft, or aircraft. These restrictions are not unduly severe; in practice they have evoked little if any protest. The criticism has come from the Government's interning persons of Austrian and German birth, including Jews, who had come to England as political refugees and, even before the war, had demonstrated their eager willingness to work against the Nazi régime. Some of those interned have been writers, scientists, scholars, of note. Competent physicians have been refused permission to practice in England — even to operate in British hospitals — because they were trained in Germany or Austria, though there has been need for medical men. It must be admitted, of course, that there is always the possibility that some persons who claim to have been expelled from Germany or Austria, or to have fled, may be spies, and it was no easy task, in dealing with thousands of alien enemies, to discriminate between friend and foe. It is not in Great Britain alone that the official mind finds it exceedingly difficult to admit that any error of judgment has been made or any injustice done. Yet it is one of the minor ironies of the situation that some people who would gladly devote themselves to undermining or overturning the Nazi régime find themselves interned in prison camps in England as enemy aliens.

Aliens are not the only persons whom the Government has found it advisable to place under arrest. On May 23 arrests were made of a number of British subjects whose acceptance of foreign ideologies and admiration for the governments with which Great Britain is at war was and long had been notorious. Captain A. H. M. Ramsay, M.P., was arrested that day, and members of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley with six other men and one woman, and the Secretary of the British People's Party, John Beckett. (The British People's Party is or was a Nazi-Fascist organization.) The next day twenty-one more men and four women were arrested. It was stated that the arrests were 'for custodial purposes only.' So pronounced was the support these people gave to totalitarian aims and methods that no fault could be found with the Government for removing them from circulation.

THE WAR

This account of the progress of Britain's war in 1940 will be in the nature of a combined chronological and topical narrative. 'The most obvious thing about this war,' said a well-known British weekly near the end of January 1940, 'is that the great Powers do not wish to attack each other.' It was this seeming unwillingness to launch any major military campaign and the relative inactivity on the Franco-German front that prompted the remark just quoted, and gave to a prominent American opportunity to say, 'There's something phony about this war.' But the inactivity was not long-lasting.

The Norwegian Disaster.

The first theater to which public attention was directed in 1940 was the north, the Scandinavian lands. On Friday, Feb. 16, on orders direct from London, H.M.S. Cossack captured the German prison ship Altmark in Josing Fjord, Norway, and freed 299 British prisoners held aboard her. This act was protested by the Norwegian government as a violation of Norway's neutrality, a protest that was somewhat weakened by the fact that the Norwegian officials had failed to take the necessary steps to prevent the Germans from carrying prisoners (taken from many a captured and sunken British merchantman) through Norwegian waters. Indeed the Norwegian authorities, despite information lodged with them by the British, had failed to find these prisoners below decks when the Altmark put in at a Norwegian port. German protests against the British foray into Norwegian waters were vigorous and bitter. (See also INTERNATIONAL LAW: Altmark Incident.) One week less than two months later, on April 9, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway. The invasion of Norway was defended on the ground that that country already was guilty of leaning toward the Allies, and the invasion was necessitated by Britain's designs on Norway. There was purpose behind the invasion, for it gave Hitler air bases only one hour away from British naval bases and shipyards; placed Germany in a better position to bring pressure to bear on Sweden and thus make sure of a steady supply of high grade iron ore from Swedish mines; and demonstrated to other lands — Italy, for instance, and Russia, and the Balkans — that it was Germany, and not Great Britain, whose policies were marked by initiative and dynamic energy and might.

The German attack of Norway took the Allies completely by surprise. On Monday, April 8, a British submarine torpedoed the German transport Rio de Janeiro in the Skagerrak, and a British destroyer, laying mines off the coast of Norway, radioed that it had sighted and engaged a German naval vessel northwest of Trondheim. There was no further word from the destroyer. A few days later the Germans announced that their heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper had sunk it. But the British did not as yet tie up these separated incidents or realize what they meant; and the German forces steamed all but unopposed into half a dozen Norwegian ports. (The part played by Norwegian traitors is a story that does not belong here: but the name of one of the chief of them, Major Quisling, has now become a word in the English language.)

The British navy won the only British successes in the Norwegian campaign. On April 9 a raid on Narvik was made by British light destroyers, which torpedoed or damaged several German war vessels and sank 6 merchant ships. Two British destroyers were sunk, however, and two disabled. Four days later, the British returned, when the British 'hoodoo' battleship, Warspite, led another attack of destroyers and other naval vessels into the iron-ore port, destroyed or crippled several German warships, and sank virtually all other German ships lying in the harbor. The second notable naval victory for the British occurred on April 10 in the Kattegat, where a series of effective and punishing attacks on German transports and warships destroyed within a period of several days approximately one-third of the German navy.

However, in little more than a fortnight, even with the terrible naval losses suffered, the Germans were able to pour some 80,000 troops into Norway, by naval transport and airplane, in addition to somewhat more than half that number that they threw into Denmark. This in itself seems the most convincing answer to subsequent German charges of British plans to occupy Norway. Then to the support of the gallant Norwegian forces struggling in the north, the British sent an expeditionary force, too small, inadequately equipped, ill prepared for its task, and without anything approaching sufficient strength in artillery and aircraft to meet the Germans on equal terms. The combination of this over-optimism and blundering was too great to be outweighed by courage and tenacity. No British troops had reached Norway till April 15, when a small force landed at Namsos; initial landings there and at two or three other ports were completed on the 19th; and not more than 12,000 troops in all were landed. A naval attack on Trondheim was scheduled for April 25, then given up, and everything south of Namsos was abandoned. Incompetence and a lack of foresight and cooperation doomed the whole affair. 'Fifth Column' activities of the Germans also played a large part in demoralizing the Norwegians. Before the last Allied troops left Norway and the Norwegian king and his government found refuge in London, it was evident that the Battle of the North had been won by the Nazis.

The Collapse of Holland and Belgium.

On Friday, May 10, the day that Chamberlain resigned his post as Prime Minister of Great Britain, a new phase of the war opened — early in the morning of that day the Germans invaded Belgium and The Netherlands. At 7:30 A.M. the German ambassador to Belgium offered to the Belgians Hitler's protection against Great Britain and France. Full two hours before this offer was made and rejected, bombs from air raiders fell on Brussels, and German troops crossed the Belgian border. At the same time total war was unleashed against Holland. In each country the Germans met with resistance, and each country appealed at once to Britain and to France for aid, an appeal that met with an immediate response. But before the Allied forces hastening north from the Franco-Belgian border could reach positions on the Albert Canal, the German columns had broken down the defenses of Liége, and were marching up the Meuse valley. The Dutch had made no attempt to defend the northeastern part of Holland; their stubborn resistance in the south and west could not prevent the invaders from pushing across Holland to Rotterdam. The clear purpose of the Germans was to seize Belgium and The Netherlands so that from them as bases they could conquer France and smash Britain. Their immediate aim was to cut off the British, French, and Belgian armies from Paris and to push them back against the Channel.

This brief and extremely inadequate statement concerning the Nazi invasion of Holland and Belgium has been made as a necessary introduction to an account of the British withdrawal, and the later complete collapse of opposition to Germany on the Continent. Faced with the emergency that was in some sense a repetition of 1914 — when it was openly stated in the House of Commons that Belgium in the hands of Germany was a pistol pointed at the heart of England — the British threw their best troops and their finest equipment into the struggle, in an endeavor to stem the Nazi tide. Whether the combined French, Belgian, British armies, properly coordinated, could have been successful in this attempt is questionable. However, Leopold, King of the Belgians, who had abandoned his country's alliance with France in the hope that absolute neutrality would save Belgium, and who until the evening of May 9 had trusted in Hitler's assurances, now called the British and the French to his aid. But he was fighting only for his own kingdom; for the Allied cause he had, seemingly, no sympathy. And on May 27 Leopold, against the advice of his ministers, decided to ask the Germans for terms. At 4 o'clock on the morning of May 28 the Belgians capitulated; at the royal command their armies, which occupied the northern wing, ceased fighting. This abrupt surrender, without due notice, left the Allied armies locked in a trap, from which they had to fight their way, with no help from the armies in the south. The British left flank was now fatally exposed; but, in full cooperation with the French (though for a time contact had been lost between the British and the First French Army, which was then farther from the coast than were the British), they began their withdrawal, in orderly fashion, though mowed down by German planes and desperately fighting every inch of the way as they retired to escape the 'iron ring' of the Germans. Even before the Belgian capitulation it had seemed that the chances of Allied success were slender; however, that the northern armies could now reach the sea seemed only a forlorn hope. Yet, almost miraculously, they did reach the coast at Dunkirk, where French and British naval and merchant vessels, with swarms of small English craft — rowboats, motor boats and sail boats — scurrying out from England and manned by English boatmen and other civilians, succeeded in carrying away more than 335,000 men, French and British, to safety. The evacuation of Dunkirk lasted several days and nights — days and nights of nightmare, when men stood off shore in water to their waists or buried in the sand dunes to escape being raked by German aircraft fire, and patiently awaited their turn to be picked up by the brave little English rescue vessels. It forms a heroic chapter in the world's history. Six British destroyers were sunk and some smaller craft, with seven French destroyers and one supply ship — at least 24,000 tons of shipping in all — because the Germans exerted every effort, by sea and land and air, to make the evacuation impossible. 'We must be very careful,' said Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, 'not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations, but there was a victory inside this deliverance which must be noted.' Splendid though this action was, with glory for the army, the navy with its volunteer civilian assistants, and the air force, it was none the less a decisive German victory. Admittedly the British lost more than 30,000 men in Flanders; and their losses in matériel were enormous — nearly 1,000 guns, and all their transport and all the armored vehicles that were with the Army of the North.

It mattered little now either to the British or to the Germans that King Haakon of Norway with British aid was still holding out in the northern reaches of his realm, that a German force had been pushed to within six miles of the Swedish frontier and faced destruction from British planes and artillery. Even that meager satisfaction lasted but little longer; a German naval force caught the British off guard; Haakon ordered a stop to resistance in Norway; the British expeditionary force began to evacuate; Haakon and his heir, together with the Norwegian cabinet moved to England.

Capitulation of France.

The Battle of France, which began on the morrow of the evacuation of Dunkirk, cannot be told here. When France seemed in imminent danger of collapse, before Paris was left undefended in order that it be not destroyed, the British Government offered to strip their country of its home defenses, to send to France every plane, cannon, machine gun, and man that could be transported there, and to spend for that purpose money that had been designated for the purchase of munitions for months to come. More than that, in a last effort, Churchill submitted to the French Government a design for the union of the French and British empires. (See also WORLD PEACE.) On June 21, however, the Battle of France ended. Great Britain remained alone against Nazi Germany; and, now that she fought single handed, Italy was added to her foes, when on June 14, she declared war on Great Britain and on France — too late to be called on for any considerable military action on the European continent, but early enough to share in the spoils. The terms which the French Government, which had removed to Bordeaux, accepted caused grief and amazement in Britain. 'His Majesty's Government find that the terms of the armistice . . . reduce the Bordeaux Government to a state of complete subjection to the enemy and deprive it of all liberty and all right to represent free French citizens. The Government now declare that they can no longer regard the Bordeaux Government as the government of an independent country.'

No charge of treason was directed by the British against the members of the French government, as had earlier been directed against Leopold of Belgium; but the British did protest against the freeing of German airmen, prisoners who had been shot down by British as well as French fighters, and they did feel it necessary to take steps even against France; for the terms agreed to by the French cleared the field for the long threatened invasion of Britain by the Germans.

Taking Over of French Naval Vessels.

On the night between the 2nd and 3rd of July, French naval vessels that were lying in English and Scottish ports were quietly taken over by the British. These included 2 old battleships, 2 light cruisers, 8 destroyers, and a considerable number of submarines, mine sweepers, and small craft. One was the Surcouf of 2,880 tons, the world's largest submarine. The seizure of these vessels was carried out almost without untoward incident; there was a scuffle on the Surcouf, in which one French officer and one British seaman were killed. At Alexandria a French fleet consisting of 1 battleship, 4 cruisers, and several smaller ships was offered the option of being immobilized at Alexandria or sunk. The British could not afford to run the risk of these ships going back to France to be surrendered to the Germans and added to the German fleet. A vote was taken among the French, and the fleet was surrendered. The Frenchmen themselves were given the choice of enlisting with the British or being sent back to France. A good many enlisted, and applied for naturalization; but there has long been more anti-British feeling in the French navy than in the army. This, with steps taken by the French Government to replace officers friendly to Great Britain with others on whom they could more implicitly rely, brought about the tragedy of Oran.

Battle of Oran.

The strength of the French navy was concentrated at Oran, on the Algerian coast, about 200 miles east of Gibraltar and 675 miles from Toulon. To this port was sent a British squadron, which lay in battle order below the horizon while the former naval attaché at Paris carried to the French admiral the British ultimatum. This allowed any one of three courses of action: (1) to join the British and continue to fight against Germany and Italy; (2) to sail with reduced crews to some British port; (3) if in honor bound not to use their ships against the Axis Powers, to sail to some port in the French West Indies. If within six hours the commander of the French fleet would agree to none of these, the British 'must with profound regret require you to sink your ships' and, if that were not done 'to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German or Italian hands.' In the event, it was this last course that was followed. The greatest naval battle of the war was the engagement between fleets that only a fortnight before had been allied. One of the two French battle cruisers was destroyed, two modernized battleships, a 10,000 ton seaplane tender, and some destroyers, sub-chasers, submarines, and other vessels; and something like 1,000 French officers and seamen were killed. The British Prime Minister, telling the story to Parliament, spoke of it as 'this melancholy action'; the French considered it an outrage (but it seems that they were told, inaccurately, that the fleet was offered only the choice of joining the British or being sunk); the Germans professed to see in it the greatest crime in all history.

War in the Mediterranean and Africa.

The entrance of Italy into the war shortly before the defeat of France gave to the British a new theater of warfare. The Italian fleet possessed, at any rate, a nuisance value in the eastern Mediterranean, and the Italian armies in Africa were a threat to the Suez Canal. However slight may be the value placed on the Italian fleet as a fighting organization, the necessity of maintaining considerable naval strength in the Mediterranean to offset it has been a severe tax on the British. The Italian military strength, however, was far too great to be disregarded, as they soon showed. Rather than endeavor to hold Somaliland against a superior force, the British retired and left Somaliland, in August, to the Italians. This, the first loss of British territory in the war 'represents a distressing setback,' said the London Times. The danger to the British has been the greater because of the uncertainty regarding what would happen in the very considerable African territories of the French. And, were the Suez Canal to fall into enemy hands, the blow would be far more serious than a 'distressing setback.'

Early in September, Italian troops invaded Egypt and moved eastward from Libya to Sidi Barrani, some 75 miles inside the Egyptian frontier, which they reached Sept. 17. Their advance was slow, careful, methodical; the British reported nothing but rearguard engagements. Then, on Dec. 9, the British struck by land, sea and air. Sidi Barrani, after being engaged from the coast side and shelled by the British fleet, was captured by a surprise attack from the rear. Forty thousand prisoners and vast stores of oil, food, and military supplies were seized. The remnants of the Italian force retired toward Libya, hard pressed by the Australian troops which formed the major part of the British forces. On Dec. 14, they escaped a trap at Solum, the last stand on Egyptian soil. On Dec. 16, the Italian stronghold of Capuzzo in Libya was taken, and on Dec. 17, the great fortress of Bardia was besieged. For over two weeks, the 30,000 defenders of Bardia held out, raked by shell fire from the sea and heavy bombs from the air. On Jan. 5, 1941, the final remnant of the Italian troops surrendered to a small force of Australians. As the British pushed on into Libya toward Tobruk and Benghazi, they reported that the total Italian losses thus far in the campaign had amounted to 94,000 killed, wounded, and prisoners.

The damage done earlier to the Italian fleet at Taranto on the night of Nov. 11-12 was a blow to Italian claims to naval superiority in the Mediterranean, — which, indeed, they never actually dominated. The British victories in Africa, with the large measure of success of the Greeks in Albania (where the British air force has given the Greeks valuable support) may eventually prove to be of great significance, even, perhaps, a turning point in the war. (See also EGYPT; ITALY.)

Preparations for Total War.

Great Britain is an island besieged. At least, since the collapse of France, the British have been aware of the possibility of a Nazi invasion; and for months now Britain has been mercilessly bombed from the air, while, at the same time, the Germans have shown an unswerving purpose to cut off all supplies or aid that may come by sea. Mention has been made of the British tax program, of the restrictions placed on aliens, of the arrest and internment of enemy aliens and of British who sympathize with the enemy. In order to make possible the expenditure of every ounce of energy in the prosecution of the war, on May 22 Parliament passed the Emergency Powers Defence Act. This gave the Government the right to conscript every person, every piece of property, every penny in the kingdom; more specifically, to direct any person to perform any required act, to control all property including land, to take over industrial establishments and control wages and profits or to order firms to continue operating at a loss, and to manage the finances of the country including the banks. The charge that this made Great Britain a totalitarian state is inaccurate. The Act does not abolish political parties; it does not end freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; it has not prevented strikes; it has not been employed to 'regiment' the life and thought of the people. It simply gives the Government the right to do certain things, insofar as they may be approved by Parliament; and, it must be remembered, a British government lasts only so long as it has the support of the House of Commons.

The War at Sea.

The war at sea has been in the main an attempt on the part of the Germans to sink British shipping and other vessels trading with Great Britain, while the British have attempted to carry on. From September to December 1939 inclusive, the British admitted the loss of 42,000 tons of shipping only. In January 1940, they lost, according to their own figures, 82,000 tons; for February the figure rose to 111,000 tons, and sank in March to 31,000, in April to 22,000 tons. These are obviously only approximations, and they do not include, it would seem, allied and neutral tonnage. In the week ending Jan. 21, 1940, the British stated that 58,088 tons of shipping had been sunk, of which 22,843 tons were British; and in the week ending March 10, 18,673 tons of British shipping were sunk. At the end of March it was stated that 27,000 tons a week was the average loss. With May the losses mounted rapidly; they continued high, and in mid-August it was said that for 49 weeks of war the weekly average was a little over 50,000 tons. Naturally, there was a disagreement between the British and the Germans as to the tonnage sunk. On Aug. 23 the British stated that the total loss came to 2,514,199 tons (that would be an average of 52,379 a week), while the Germans claimed 5,078,038 tons sunk. British figures do not include the vessels of the Royal Navy that were sunk. It was said that since July the sinkings had been going on at a rate of 400,000 tons a month.

In connection with this sea war a few incidents only can here be singled out for mention. On July 2 the Germans radioed the news that the Arandora Star of 15,501 tons had been torpedoed. The British, who deliberately allowed the world to learn of the sinking from the jubilant Germans, then let it be known that the Arandora Star had been taking 1,640 German and Italian internees to Canada and most of them were drowned. The greatest single loss was the Empress of Britain, 42,348 tons, which was sunk by German aircraft on Oct. 27, off the Irish coast. Of 643 persons aboard, 598 were saved. Two engagements in November demand mention. After failing in his attempt to draw the Italian fleet from its harbors, Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham, in command of the British Eastern Mediterranean fleet, decided to launch an attack on the Italian naval base at Taranto. There on the night of Nov. 11-12, while his fleet lay off the double harbor, planes from his carriers dropped bombs on a great aggregation of Fascist craft. The British reported that they had severely damaged 2 battleships of the Conte di Cavour class, 1 of the Littorio (35,000 tons) class, a number of lesser ships, and successfully attacked the naval dry-docks. The Italians admitted that three ships had been damaged, one severely. Of quite another sort was the epic of the Jervis Bay, a 14,000-ton armed merchantman with six 6-inch guns but no armor plate, which had charge of a convoy of 38 ships. (That so large a fleet of unarmed ships should have such slight protection is evidence of the lack of armed ships facing the British.) They were in the North Atlantic. Just at sunset a German raider appeared and from a distance of about 8 miles began to throw 11-inch shells at the convoy. Without a moment's hesitation the captain of the Jervis Bay headed his ship straight for the German raider, laying a smoke screen to enable the convoy to escape. Her main bridge was carried away, her steering gear wrecked, the captain wounded. The ship was in flames and sinking before Captain Fegan gave the order to abandon her. He stayed with his ship; virtually every one of the men who left in a lifeboat and rafts was wounded. A few were ultimately rescued. Of the ships the Jervis Bay had fought for, all but four made port. Nothing is 'unparalleled' in a total war; but the courage of Captain Fegan and the men of the Jervis Bay may properly be termed unsurpassed.

The sea war waged by the Germans on the British is a kind of counter-blockade, an attempt to starve Britain out by cutting off not only supplies of food and munitions of war, but every other imported article necessary to the national life. The amount of tonnage sunk has been too great for the sinkings to be lightly regarded. The action of the United States Government in transferring 50 destroyers to Great Britain in return for naval bases was welcomed because of the sharp need for naval vessels of that type. To the British people, living in a state of siege, the air warfare is and has been for some months an even more pressing danger than the war at sea.

The War in the Air.

The first civilian casualties in a bombing raid on England occurred on May 24 when there were 8 injured, none killed, in a northeastern coastal town. Serious aerial warfare the British date from June 18. They announced that in the month June 18-July 17 there were 336 civilians killed in air raids and 476 seriously injured; and they claimed to have brought down, over and about the British Isles, 92 German bombers and 41 fighters with a British loss of 69 bombers and 22 fighters. The figures mounted rapidly. In June, 78 killed, 155 injured; in July, 258 killed, 321 injured; in August, 1,075 killed, 1,261 injured; in September, 6,954 killed, 10,615 injured; totals for 4 months, 8,365 killed and 12,352 injured. These are civilian casualties. With the beginning of mass air raids the British released figures showing the number of their aircraft lost over Britain, with the number of pilots, and also the number of German aircraft. Between Aug. 8 and Oct. 30, the British admitted the loss of 732 planes and 351 pilots; they claimed to have brought down 2,420 German planes in that same time. It is to be noted that these figures do not include British aircraft lost in attacks on German (or German-dominated) points, nor those destroyed on the ground — as in the attacks on airports and their facilities. Italian planes took part in a raid over Britain for the first time on Nov. 11 (Armistice Day), when 13 of them were shot down. The figures given for civilian casualties are inadequate. Of the persons reported as injured in the September raids, 1,411 subsequently died, bringing the total number of bombing deaths for that month to 8,365; further, the figure for the injured (10,615) was for the seriously injured, an additional 12,352 being later reported as having been injured. The majority of these were women.

The German bombing raids have been directed partly against regions where munitions and engines of war are manufactured, partly against railways and docks — all of which are legitimate targets — and, in addition, against the civilian population, against hospitals, schools, and public buildings, in an endeavor to shatter the morale of the British. The attempt to arouse fear through Schrecklichkeit seems to have failed, though from September on, tens of thousands of English folk have spent their nights in underground shelters. The damage done has been enormous. The British censors have been slow in releasing information. A quotation from the Archbishop of Canterbury's report to his diocesan conference will suffice to give an impression of the damage done by the German air raiders — not only to great cities, but also to towns whose names have hardly appeared in our press: 'The population of Margate has fallen from 40,000 (in the summer season, 150,000) to about 10,000; that of Ramsgate to about one-third of what it was; of Deal from 23,000 to about 7,500; of Folkestone from 47,000 to under 11,000. Thousands of houses are empty, whole streets are almost completely deserted, trade has largely vanished.'

London and the large cities, however, suffered very heavily. Coventry and Birmingham were visited with terrific destruction, while Liverpool and other great Midland centers were bombed in mass attacks with devastating regularity. Monuments of historical importance have been injured or destroyed in these raids — ancient churches, public buildings and great mansions. Buckingham Palace itself was bombed as were the Houses of Parliament, and the destruction of great libraries and cathedrals, the damage to Lambeth Palace, the whole array of architectural ruins that now is to be found in Britain are melancholy to contemplate. Yet buildings can be repaired or new edifices take their place. It is the poor, who live in congested areas and have been blasted from their small homes by bombs or buried in the ruins, who have suffered most terribly. The magnificent courage of the British people under these conditions, however, has been praised throughout the world of free men. With them it is 'Thumbs up! We are not downhearted!'

The British Royal Air Force, in return, has not been idle. Raid after raid of British aircraft has been made over German industrial centers and German-controlled ports. Hamburg and Bremen, vital shipping and shipbuilding centers, have been repeatedly attacked and set ablaze; Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, and the vast Ruhr industrial centers have been crippled by constant and unrelenting fire-bombing raids, and the munitions works and rail and communication stations in and around Berlin have been hammered into destruction.

Expected Invasion of Britain.

One phase of the war of Germany against Britain must not be overlooked, however, in spite of the fact that it has not yet taken place — the invasion of the British mainland. British reports have been frequent of German troop concentrations along the channel ports of France and Belgium, of congregations of flat boats filled with German soldiers who practiced for the invasion. It is true that at such times the British bombing of the Channel ports increased in violence. Several dates have also been set by Hitler for this invasion. It was definitely asserted in one report that German invasion forces actually made ready for the attempt early in September, but were dispersed by heavy bombings and by a providential Channel storm.

For further data on Great Britain's relations with foreign countries, see articles on those countries; also ARABIA; EUROPEAN WAR; GERMANY; JAPAN; PALESTINE; SPAIN and TURKEY.