July 18th 1940

Thursday July 18th

I hardly know why I have not written this diary up for the last three weeks. Certainly it is not that I have forgotten it, or been gravelled for lack of matter!

Perhaps the most awe-inspiring event of the whole war was the Cabinet’s decision to put the French Navy out of action to prevent it being used against us*. I can think of no parallel action. So tragic, unless it was Drake’s decision to hang his friend Thomas Doughty** for mutiny during their voyage round the world. There is a parallel in those stark times and these, and a resurgence of the uncompromising virtues and vices of an age that had to tackle realities which once more we have to face.

We wait. Voices across the Channel threaten and bluster with ever-increasing violence and bombast – and we wait.

I think my countrymen are the strangest souls alive. I suppose the Germans regard the war as practically over – in their favour – but my Englishmen still regard it as a game which, in the long run, they will undoubtedly win. And they will, because they’ll never entertain the possibility of their being beaten.

And so – we wait.

* See details of the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir (Battle of Mers-el-Kébir) on 3 July 1940 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-el-K%C3%A9bir

** On a 1577 voyage to rob Spanish treasure fleets, Doughty was found guilty of treason and witchcraft in a shipboard trial, then executed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Doughty_(explorer)