Posted on 04/11/2009 6:17:31 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
I did not realized this level of resignation existed well before the Nazi-Soviet pact.
Ping. Comment at #2
thanks homer. that worked
The British habit of the week-end, the great regard which the British pay to holidays which coincide with festivals of the Church, is studied abroad. Good Friday was also the first day after Parliament had dispersed. It was known too that on that day the British Fleet was carrying out in a routine manner a programme long announced. It would therefore be dispersed in all quarters. . . . I can well believe that if our Fleet had been concentrated and cruising in the southern parts of the Ionian Sea the Albanian adventure would never have been undertaken. . . .
After twenty-five years’ experience in peace and war, I believe the British Intelligence Service to be the finest of its kind in the world. Yet we have seen, both in the case of the subjugation of Bohemia and on the occasion of the invasion of Albania, that Ministers of the Crown had apparently no inkling, or at any rate no conviction, of what was coming. I cannot believe that this is the fault of the British Secret Service.
How was it that on the eve of the Bohemian outrage Ministers were indulging in what was called “sunshine talk” and predicting “the dawn of a Golden Age”? How was it that last week’s holiday routine was observed at a time when clearly something of a quite exceptional character, the consequences of which could not be measured, was imminent? . . . It seem to me that Ministers run the most tremendous risks if they allow the information collected by the Intelligence Department, and sent to them, I am sure, in good time, to be sifted and coloured and reduced in consequence and importance, and if they ever get themselves into a mood of attaching weight only to those pieces of information which accord with their earnest and honourable desire that the peace of the world should remain unbroken.
All things are moving at the same moment. Year by year, month by month, they have all been moving forward together. While we have reached certain positions in thought, others have reached certain positions in fact. The danger is now very near, and a great part of Europe is to a very large extent mobilized. Millions of men are being prepared for war. Everywhere the frontier defences are being manned. Everywhere it is felt that some new stroke is impending. If it should fall, can there be any doubt that we should be involved? We are no longer where we were two or three months ago. We have committed ourselves in every direction, rightly in my opinion, having regard to all that has happened. It is not necessary to enumerate the countries to which directly or indirectly we have given or are giving guarantees. What we should not have dreamt of doing a year ago, when all was so much more powerful, what we should not have dreamt of doing even a month ago, we are doing now. Surely then when we aspire to lead all Europe back from the verge of the abyss on to the uplands of law and peace we must ourselves set the highest example. We must keep nothing back. How can we bear to continue to lead our comfortable, easy lives here at home, unwilling to pronounce even the word “compulsion”, unwilling to take even the necessary measure by which the armies which we have promised can alone be recruited and equipped? The dark, bitter waters are rising fast on every side. How can we continue – let me say with particular frankness and sincerity – with less than the full force of the nation incorporated in the governing instrument?
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
4/13/39 update at #7: Churchill on the Mediterranean fleet, intelligence, and conscription.
I'm re-reading Churchill's The Gathering Storm, just around the time of Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935-36. The League of Nations had agreed to make a stand, but then Britain refused to deploy its fleet in the Mediterranean, so the whole thing collapsed.
Churchill felt that the failure to sail at that time probably made WW2 inevitable: the League's stance against Italy had already driven Mussolini toward Hitler; and the failure to sail and thus back up the League's resolution convinced Hitler that Britain would never respond.
The League itself was fatally wounded, and it essentially fragmented any possible later response to German military moves. It was one of the major reasons why France didn't take action when Germany re-occupied the Rhineland in 1936....
It's a very sobering book. On the one hand, George W. Bush's War on Terror stands as "the opposite" to Britain's policies in the '20s and '30s. Obama, on the other hand, seems to be very much in the mold of the Baldwin and McDonald governments of that time -- lots of talk, and no willingness to recognize and act on the need for force.
Dangerous times....
As noted above ... read The Gathering Storm. Chamberlain was merely the culmination of nearly two decades of British fecklessness. Their unwillingness even to prepare was deeply ingrained.
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