June 14th 1940

Friday June 14th

Paris has fallen*. M Reynaud’s desperate appeal to America has received no answer – except that Roosevelt says “it has not reached him officially”! Sunk in sloth and folly and unpreparedness as we were before the September crisis, there was no help they could give. What is to be done must be done by our own efforts.

I think I shall remember this day as long as memory holds its seat in this distracted globe. The sense of tragedy enacted and impending is utter, and almost overwhelming.

I shall never forget the BBC’s courageous and inspiring music of Sibelius First Symphony and the whole of Cesar Franck’s D minor. These the enemy can never take away, but I feel as if something inside me is dying.

Oh Paris, Paris. It is only five weeks since the invasion of Belgium!

*Details on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_World_War_II