“The Government has to take seriously the fact that the two Oppositions are now appealing over its head to a certain amount of latent jingoism in the country”.

“I often think to myself that it's not I but someone else who is P.M. and is the recipient of those continuous marks of respect and affection from the general public who called in Downing Street or at the station to take off their hats and cheer. And then I go back to the House of Commons and listen to the unending stream of abuse of the P.M., his faithlessness, his weakness, his wickedness, his innate sympathy with Fascism and his obstinate hatred of the working classes’.

‘All our information points to a quiet time until about the third week in August when it is suggested a “crisis” might begin to boil up. But nearly always it is the predicted crisis that never materialises and I expect it will be so again. The curious accident by which we shall have a gigantic fleet exercising in the North Sea all August and September may possibly have some influence in this direction. There are more ways of killing a cat than strangling it and if I refuse to take Winston into the Cabinet to please those who say it would frighten Hitler, it doesn't follow that the idea of frightening Hitler, or rather of convincing him that it would not pay him to use force, need be abandoned’.