Modern warfare involves not only the fighting forces of land, sea, and air, but the great army of men and women behind the lines, for most of whom is dullness instead of danger, hard work, self sacrifice and discomfort untouched by the glamour surrounding the Services.
Here are extracts from speeches showing that the organization and morale of the Home Front constitute essential factors in winning the war.
Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Privy Seal, in a Broadcast, September 22nd 1939.
Some of you are perplexed. I am not surprised. Your life has been suddenly changed. Your future has become uncertain.
You had been keyed up to great air raids, and instead of the heroic sacrifice that you had been ready to offer, you have had three weeks of domestic trouble, of irritating worry, of gloomy foreboding.
In the war of nerves these small offensives are sometimes more difficult to meet then the massed attacks.
They need the steadfast fortitude that only comes from a set purpose.
This steadfast fortitude is pre eminent among British qualities.
It is showing itself in these difficult days when we are passing from the world of peace into the world of war.
At this moment of transition there is bound to be dislocation.
I am here tonight to say that the Government is doing its upmost to mitigate this dislocation….
Our war effort is to be the maximum effort of the whole country.
It will be not less than our war effort in 1918. In such an effort there will be no room for idle hands.
Gigantic programmes are every day gathering momentum.
I study them, and I am certain that no distant date there is scarcely an able bodied men or women whose services the country will not need.
Be patient, therefore, if you have sought war work and have not yet found it.
The war work will soon be seeking you…
Then what about economy? By all means let us all economize.
The Budget next week will make us all economize and it is right that it should.
But economy does not mean refusing to buy anything. We live by buying and selling.
Wise Buying and Honest Selling
Go on buying and selling then, but when you buy, buy prudently, and pay your bills to run off into the country and to leave your tradesmen unpaid in town is an act of desertion on the Home Front and when you sell, avoid profiteering as you would the plague.
We must have no misers, no hoarders, and no profiteers.
And there is something more to be said, We must not encourage the war obsession that sometimes leads excellent people into anti social courses.
Of course the war adds a gigantic burden to those we already bear.
But our people are of so fine a temper that they will carry this extra burden and yet maintain the kindly good nature and common sense of the British character.
I think of the spirit with which the women in the country villages have already received the refugees from towns, the country women and the villages have done splendidly.
We all give them our thanks and our congratulations.
And true to British tradition, they are facing these troubles with a smile and a joke. Every district and village has already its budget of funny stories about the great dispersal.
This British spirit of good humour is going to dissipate the darkness of the black out, it is going to help the employer and his employee, the trader and his customer to carry on with a cheerful face.
And behind it is another support that always seems to stand out more clearly in times of strain and stress, the prop and stay of good companionship.
For faced with the great issues of life and death, we gather together as one family.
Where yesterday each was intent on his own affairs, today a common purpose has created a real community of feeling.
As a minister of the Crown I see the typists, the telephone girls, the Post Office, the messengers, working as if they were the Prime Minister himself in their determination to help their country in the hour of its need.
You see the same spirit wherever you go in your own walk of life.
This is a spirit that cannot be quenched. This is a will to win that cannot be defeated.
And when behind it all istheMaginot Line of faith in the great moral verities, of faith held by Christians Jews ,Moslems, Hindus and Buddhists in a unique alliance of the worlds believers, such as has never before been known in history, you and I can then face with steadfast fortitude and cheerful confidence the dark nights ,the vexations of war, the air raids ,the parting, for we know that we shall win, and we are certain that we shall see the triumph of faith over the brute force of the new paganism.
Mr Chamberlain, September 26th 1939
It may be of interest to the House and to the country if I make my main theme today the development of some of the vast undertakings, vital to the winning of the war, now being entered upon on the Home Front, and the repercussions of these undertakings upon the national life.
Let me begin with a short account of the work of the Ministry of Economic Warfare.
This Department will perform, broadly speaking ,the functions which were carried out in the last war by the Ministry of Blockade, but whereas this last Ministry was not set up until 1916, the Ministry of Economic Warfare has been under organization for the past two years, and the complete staff necessary to run it was selected many months ago.
The general object of the Ministry is to disorganize Germany’s economic structure to such an extent as to make it impossible for her to carry on the war.
For every man in the front line you must have many behind the lines, engaged in the production and servicing of the weapons of war, and if Britain can prevent Germany from importing the raw materials essential for the functioning of her war industries the result will be effectively to cripple her power to prolong hostilities.
In its effects upon the life of the nation the great change that is now taking place in the scope and purpose of industry is all important.
Practically the whole force of our industry has now to be concentrated, directly or indirectly on war needs…..
If this great task is to be carried through successfully the co-operation of the workpeople themselves is the first essential and I take this opportunity of declaring that the Government are ready and anxious to take any steps that may be necessary to secure their good will….
The full organization of the country’s resources requires more than machinery for the regulation of working conditions and of employment, and it is the view of the Government that the support of both employers and workers organizations is essential if this country is to put forth its maximum effort.
Loyalty and Support of the Trades Unions
The trades unions, which have agreed, under proper safeguards, to relax their normal conditions, have saved us from the difficulties which confronted us in the last war, and have made a contribution us in the last war, and have made a contribution for which the whole country is grateful.
There is in fact, no country in which the Government is assured of more organized assistance than that at our disposal.
Finally I wish to say a word to the House and though the House to the country, about our general attitude towards the war.
No one can doubt that, in modern warfare, it is upon the determination, courage and endurance of ordinary men and women that victory ultimately depends.
No one familiar with conditions in this country can have any doubt as to where we stand in these respects.
Never have our people been more united or more determined.
They are resolved and the simple fact cannot be too often stressed to rid themselves once for all of the perpetual threat of German aggression, of which Poland is only the latest instance.
We and France entered the war to rid ourselves and the world of that menace, and our peoples are united as they have never been united before in their resolve to achieve that purpose.
