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This is a war between machine power and strength of character—so far an inconclusive war. The British will not win this war on the strength of their character alone. But they have definitely and gloriously proved that no machine power can break their morale.

British morale is the miracle of this war. Even Hitler admits it. His mouthpiece, “Voelkischer Beobachter,” speaks about the “strain of Nordic blood in the Englishmen which enables them to hold out.” For Hitlerites this might be a sufficient explanation. Human beings will seek for deeper reasons.

The search for deeper reasons caused me to write this book. It is not a book on the war. Its theme is rather the origin of the war, and its prospective outcome. Both are conditioned by the British character. A wave of suicidal weakness brought disaster on them. A moral rebirth, without parallel in modern history, copes with the disaster and inspires confidence of survival and victory.

In the midst of the gravest peril the English changed their leader. Winston Churchill had to follow Neville Chamberlain as inevitably as the sun breaks through the clouds. But more remarkable than this spectacular change at the helm seems the fact that the team that pulls Great Britain through the war has remained, on the whole, unchanged. The fighters of today are the petty politicians of yesterday. Eccentrics have become constructive. Revolutionaries are now pillars of state and society. Tories forget to wear the old school tie.

The English hate war. There is no English translation for “Stahlbad”—steel bath, to put it approximately—as the Teutons like to call the frolic of bloodshed. Yet the war brought about a great transformation in the British. I venture to show this transformation in a few test-cases. Three dates stand out on the road from appeasement to belligerency. The first was September, 1939, when war was declared; the second, and more important, May, 1940, when Churchill replaced Chamberlain; the third, September, 1940, when the aerial all-out assault on England was at its height. In most cases the men around Churchill, as this book will show, demonstrated their transformation no later than May, 1940. The men I describe are not necessarily great men, but they seem to be great examples.

Standing up against darkness and tyranny, the British might well set the example for all freedom-loving peoples. Only in the sense of personal and national sacrifice is this an “English war.” It is not the first time that they are the first to hearken to the call. Remember Milton’s dictum: “When God has some difficult task on hand, he sends for his Englishmen.”

R. K.