Volume two (1949) Their finest hour Moral of the Work - In War: Resolution – In Defeat: Defiance – In Victory: Magnanimity – In Peace: Goodwill Theme of the Volume How the british people held the fort alone till those who hitherto had been half blind were half ready Book I The Fall of France
Chapter VIII
HOME DEFENCE
June
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Active measures were prepared to harass the enemy from behind; to interfere with his communications and to destroy material, as the Russians did with great results when the German tide flowed over their country a year later. Many people must have been bewildered by the innumerable activities all around them. They could understand the necessity for wiring and mining the beaches, the anti-tank obstacles at the defiles, the concrete pillboxes at the cross-roads, the intrusions into their houses to fill an attic with sandbags, on to their golf-courses or most fertile fields and gardens to burrow out some wide anti-tank ditch. All these inconveniences, and much more, they accepted in good part. But sometimes they must have wondered if there was a general scheme or whether lesser individuals were not running amok in their energetic use of newly-granted powers of interference with the property of the citizen.
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