The King's Speech - Mark Logue [69]
The House of Commons met on a Sunday for the first time in its history to hear Chamberlain’s report. One of the prime minister’s first acts was a reshuffle that brought Winston Churchill back into government as First Lord of the Admiralty, the post he had held during the First World War. Anthony Eden, who had resigned in protest over the prime minister’s policy of appeasement in February 1938, returned as secretary for the dominions. Chamberlain was now seventy years of age and already suffering from the cancer that would kill him little more than a year later – but not before he had been forced to resign, ceding the premiership to Churchill who was five years his junior.
There had been a feeling throughout that sweltering summer that war was imminent. The announcement on 22 August of a non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union brought the conflict one step closer, by giving Hitler a free hand to invade Poland and then turn his forces on the West. Three days later, Britain signed a treaty with the government in Warsaw pledging to come to its assistance if it were attacked. Chamberlain nevertheless continued to negotiate with Hitler, even though he turned down the King’s offer to write a personal letter to the Nazi leader. For many people, the worst thing was the uncertainty.
On 28 August Logue was summoned to the Palace. Alexander Hardinge, exceptionally, was there in his shirtsleeves. It was uncomfortably hot – the kind of weather Logue would have expected back home in Australia rather than in his adoptive nation. ‘One of the most stifling and unpleasant days that I can ever remember, reminded me more of Sydney or Ceylon than any day in England,’ he wrote in his diary.
The King and his aides seemed as frustrated as everyone else in the country about the lack of resolution of the crisis – as Logue noted. ‘I went into the King and his first words were “Hello Logue, can you tell me, are we at war?”’ he wrote. ‘I said I didn’t know and he said, “You don’t know, the Prime Minister doesn’t know, and I don’t know.” He is greatly worried, and said the whole thing is so damned unreal. If we only knew which way it was going to be.’ By the time Logue went home, however, he was convinced that ‘war is just around the corner’.
Then, on 1 September, German troops moved into Poland. ‘Britain Gives Last Warning,’ screamed the front page headline of the Daily Express the following morning. ‘Either stop hostilities and withdraw German troops from Poland or we will go to war.’ The smaller sub-headline immediately below provided the answer: ‘An ultimatum we will reject, says Berlin.’
Over the last few months the government had been preparing Britain and its civilian population for war – and what was expected to be heavy bombing of its major cities. Some 827,000 schoolchildren were evacuated to the country, alongside just over 100,000 teachers and their helpers, from London and other urban areas. A further 524,000 children below school age left with their mothers. The cities themselves were protected with air-raid sirens and barrage balloons; windows were to be covered with black-out paper. Trenches were dug in parks and air-raid shelters. Those with gardens of their own dug holes in which they erected corrugated-iron Anderson shelters, covering the structure over with the earth they had removed. It was recommended they dig down at least three feet.
One of the greatest fears was of chemical warfare. Poison gas had been used to horrific effect in the trenches during the First World War and there was concern that the Germans might use it against civilians in this conflict. By the outbreak of war, some 38 million black rubber gas masks had been handed out, accompanied by a propaganda campaign.