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that further efforts should be made to induce the Americans to provide substantial aid. An important message arrived from Lord Lothian, British ambassador in Washington, suggesting that Britain should invite the United States to lease basing facilities in Trinidad, Newfoundland and Bermuda. Churchill opposed any such unilateral offer. America had “given us practically no help in the war,” he said. “Now that they saw how great was the danger, their attitude was that they wanted to keep everything that would help us for their own defence.” This would remain the case until the end of the battle for France. There was no doubt of Roosevelt’s desire to help, but he was constrained by the terms of the Neutrality Act imposed by Congress. On May 17 Gen. George Marshall, chief of staff of the army, expounded to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau his objections to shipping American arms to the Allies: “It is a drop in the bucket68 on the other side and it is a very vital necessity on this side and that is that. Tragic as it is, that is it.” Between May 23 and June 3 Secretary of War Harry Woodring, an ardent isolationist, deliberately delayed shipment to Britain of war matériel condemned as surplus. He insisted that there must be prior public advertisement before such equipment was sold to the Allies. On June 5, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejected an administration proposal to sell ships and planes to Britain. The U.S. War Department declined to supply bombs to fit dive-bombers which the French had already bought and paid for.

In the last days of May, a deal for Britain to purchase twenty U.S. patrol torpedo boats was scuttled when news of it leaked to isolationist Senator David Walsh of Massachusetts. As chairman of the Senate’s Navy Affairs Committee, Walsh referred the plan to the attorney general—who declared it illegal. In mid-June, the U.S. chiefs of staff recommended that no further war matériel should be sent to Britain, and that no private contractor should be allowed to accept an order which might compromise the needs of the U.S. armed forces. None of this directly influenced the campaign in France. But it spoke volumes, all unwelcome in London and Paris, about the prevailing American mood towards Europe’s war.

It was a small consolation that other powerful voices across the Atlantic were urging Britain’s cause. The New York Times attacked Col. Charles Lindbergh, America’s arch-isolationist flying hero, and asserted the mutuality of Anglo-American interests. Lindbergh, said the Times, was “an ignorant young man if he trusts his own premise that it makes no difference to us whether we are deprived of the historic defense of British sea power in the Atlantic Ocean.” The Republican New York Herald Tribune astonished many Americans by declaring boldly, “The least costly solution in both life69 and welfare would be to declare war on Germany at once.” Yet even if President Roosevelt had wished to heed the urgings of such interventionists and offer assistance to the Allies, he had before him the example of Woodrow Wilson, in whose administration he had served. Wilson was renounced by his own legislature in 1919 for making commitments abroad—in the Versailles Treaty—which outreached the will of the American people. Roosevelt had no intention of emulating him.

Chamberlain reported on May 27 that he had spoken the previous evening to Stanley Bruce, Australian high commissioner in London, who argued that Britain’s position would be bleak if France surrendered. Bruce, a shrewd and respected spokesman for his dominion, urged seeking American or Italian mediation with Hitler. Australia’s prime minister, Robert Menzies, was fortunately made of sterner stuff. From Canberra, Menzies merely enquired what assistance his country’s troops could provide. By autumn, three Australian divisions were deployed in the Middle East. Churchill told Chamberlain to make plain to Bruce that France’s surrender would not influence Britain’s determination to fight on. He urged ministers—and emphasised the message in writing a few days later