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THIS IS THE STORY behind all our war stories. Not all the courage
and self-sacrifice of men fighting in the air, at the sea or on land
could have saved us if we had not made proper use of our manpower and
mobilised the whole people for total war. This was supreme problem –
how to put the life of the nation on a war footing, in the shortest
possible time. If we could not solve it, then we were doomed. Here was
the test. If we passed it, not only we could survive as a free people,
but the last shadow of any charge of decadence, so often brought against
us by the Axis propagandist, would vanish.
We have solved the problem and passed the test. The
people have been regrouped for total war. We have gone a long way to
make certain that each citizen is making the fullest possible
contribution to the national effort; that working and living are as good
as they can be under difficult war-time restrictions; and that, in spite
of the vast compulsory powers conferred on Government, the working of
the system safeguards our individual rights and preserves our democratic
spirit. The job has been done without the help of press-gangs, secret
police and concentration camps. There have been some hard cases, of
course for millions of people cannot be mobilised in any fashion without
some individuals feeling, rightly or wrongly, that they have been badly
treated. But these are a tiny and dwindling minority. What is important
is that the gigantic task has been accomplished without our saying
good-bye to the democratic spirit, to tolerance and good-humour, and our
respect for personality. We have retained the deep inward sense of
freedom and of the values of the individual while we have been
organizing, toughening and arming ourselves to fight for the survival of
these capital human qualities. This is great achievement as a people.
This then is the story behind all our war stories.
It cannot be told in full. We are, in fact, still in the middle of the
adventure. But enough can be told to show what a remarkable story it is.
Let us begin with the date 22nd May,
1940. Of course there had been preparatory work before then. There was
the Military Training act, the Schedule of Reserved Occupations, and the
method that we introduced with the passing of National Service Act at
the outbreak of war. These had laid the foundation for the mobilisation
of our manpower. But now the phoney war had stopped being phoney and
almost overnight the whole outlook had changed. There had, therefore, to
be an immense speeding-up, a classification and a broadening of the
existing basis in order that complete mobilisation might be secured.
The Nazis were securely established in Norway and
Denmark, and now the Luftwaffe and the panzer division had been let
loose against France and the Low Countries. The tiger was out. On 22nd
May Mr. Churchill flew to France to discuss the horrible situation with
Mr. Reynaud and General Weygand. And on that same day, in the House of
Commons, the British nation really went to war, for in less than three
hours the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1940, passed through
all its stages. “It is necessary,” announced the Leader of
the House, Mr. Attlee, “that the Government should be given the
complete over the persons and the property, not just some persons of
some particular class of the community, but all persons, rich and
poor, employer or workman, man or women and all property.” The
trumpets were sounding at last.
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