"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. . . . The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned upon us. Hitler knows he must break us in this island or lose the war. . . .
"If we fail, the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister and perhaps more prolonged by the lights of a perverted science.
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' "
To the danger and duty thus described by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, some 2,650,000 British males, variously armed and accoutred and closely deployed in an area about the size of Wyoming, last week stood up expectantly. As the French Republic went under the conqueror's heel at Compiegne (see p. 20), they alone in all Europe were left to face what the Wilhelmstrasse last week assured them would be an attack "like nothing the world has ever seen."
The British regular Army units to defend the homeland consisted of 1,250,000 home troops, plus 350,000 reconditioned survivors of the B. E. F., plus 50,000 newly arrived and sunburned Australians, plus a third contingent of Canadian fliers and replacements, plus 500,000 draftees in training. Some help will come from 500,000 local defense volunteers armed with shotguns and sporting rifles. To the special anti-Blitzkrieg force of old reserves, 500,000 strong, their commander General Sir Edmund Ironside said:
"If and when they [parachute troops] come down, you can shoot them, shoot them, shoot them without any reference to taking any kind of care of their future. ... It is like putting antiseptic into a wound: if you do not put it on pretty quickly it rots. Similarly they will expand and push out, get down the roads, get into the houses and take a lot of getting out."
August 15 is the date set by Adolf Hitler for Britain's complete defeat, but no invasion by ground forces seemed likely to come until Germany's air forces had
"softened up" the country by sustained, concentrated bombardment. Only the first phase of the Battle of Britain began last week. To meet it, 1,250,000 air-raid protection workers were at their posts. Airraid shelters which would withstand anything but 500-lb. bombs within 30 ft. were available for 12,000,000 persons. Ready also were 2,000 first-aid stations, 190,000 ambulances, 300,000 hospital beds. The public was urged to carry clean handkerchiefs or towels, be ready to see and bind up severe wounds. Lovers were warned not to park in country lanes lest they be shot as suspicious characters. Plans were rushed to evacuate 20,000 children to North America and all interned aliens, lest they be released to help the invaders. With the first wholesale loads of German bombs, a heavy new blanket of censorship fell upon the land. Until it is over, few will know the true extent of carnage in the Battle of Britain.