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As First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill laughed at seniority, advanced sea pups over sea dogs, shifted the navy from coal to oil to increase cruising range, shifted (secretly) from 13.5-inch guns to 15-inch guns to increase fire range, founded the air arm. He burst into tears when Asquith told Parliament that World War I had begun—but the fleet was ready.
In 1923 Churchill wrote in The World Crisis, his brilliant history of World War I: "Open the sea cocks and let our ships sink. In ... half an hour at most, the whole outlook of the world would be changed. The British Empire would dissolve . . . Europe after one mighty convulsion passing into the iron grip and rule of the Teuton. . . . There would only be left far across the Atlantic, unarmed, unready, and as yet uninstructed, America to manage singlehanded law and freedom among men." He could not free himself from a sense of doom.
England had won World War I. The price was nervous exhaustion, loss of the will to power. The post-war generation was shot through with futility, discontent, hatred. Churchill perceived that "the decisive battles would be fought for the soul, the will, the morale of his nation." He set about it, for he also perceived that World War I would not be the last.
The year Mein Kampf was published (1925) he began "his desperate, singlehanded, 14-year struggle for England's soul and power of vision" by writing three little-known essays. In Shall We All Commit Suicide? he warned that in Germany "science [had gone] mad in the hands of demon-ridden masses." In Mass Effects in Modern Life he warned that mass production found its political form in the Bolshevik state. In Fifty Years Hence Churchill forecast the rise of fascist states whose power would far exceed the intelligence of their rulers, whose intelligence would far exceed their morals. But he would not write off democracy. Democracy, he insisted, is a function of morality.
His warnings grew louder. He was met by cries of "Warmonger!", "Cassandra!"; sometimes a supercilious "Good old Winnie!" When in 1934 he warned the country that Hitler was arming fast, that England must double its air force at once, Sir Herbert Samuel cried in the House of Commons: "This is rather the language of a Malay running amuck than of a responsible British statesman."
After MacDonald and Baldwin came Chamberlain, who "liked to be called 'British like beef,' " but was really "an eccentric figure behind a disguise of excessive normality." The appeasers were in. "All they wanted was to lay their heads on the block and be left in peace, peace!" Von Ribbentrop came visiting and proselyting. "A wave of political perversion broke over polite society."
Churchill fought on, and the annoyance of peace-sluggish Britons, who preferred the appeasers, turned to hatred. At first they had heckled him, howled him down, spat at him, struck at him. "Now," says Biographer Kraus, "no dog would take a scrap from his hand." He grew tired of his own voice, tired of his own "everlasting prophecies, and still more thoroughly tired of the awful consistency with which they were fulfilled." But one fact obsessed him—London was defended by only seven anti-aircraft guns.