Foreign & General
1. 12,000 naval reservists to be called up July 31 for about 7 weeks. Sunday Times [a]
2. General impression that Anglo-Russian pact is going to fall through. Sunday Times [b]; Sunday Express [c]
3. Sunday Express states that move to include Churchill in Cabinet is really move to get rid of Chamberlain. Sunday Express [d]
Social
1. No mention of dissentients among 30,000 militiamen called up yesterday. [No reference]
2. More or less scaremongering article (submarine menace) by Liddell Hart[1] in Sunday Express. Sunday Express [e]
Party Politics
1. Liberal retains N. Cornwall seat, slightly increasing previous small majority. Both candidates’ polls rose largely. Daily Telegraph, 15.7.39 [f]
2. Beaverbrook press accuses P.P.U. of being pro-Nazi, misquoting article. Peace News, 14.7.39
Miscellaneous
1. Eton-Harrow match ends in a fight, the first time since 1919. Sunday Express [g]
[a]
[b]
[c]
[d]
[e]
[f]
[g]
[1] Orwell wrote of him, ‘The two military critics most favoured by the intelligentsia are Captain Liddell Hart and Major-General Fuller, the first of whom teaches that defence is stronger than the attack, and the second that the attack is stronger than the defence. This contradiction has not prevented both of them from being accepted as authorities by the same public. The secret reason for their vogue in left-wing circles is that both of them are at odds with the War Office’; see ‘Notes on Nationalism,’ Polemic,1, [October] 1945, 2668. Peter Davison
Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 
This is a bit like reading the notes to a thriller and knowing the end of the story before the author does.
Its a good thing to see those Eton and Harrow boys limbering up for the war. If only the Germans had played cricket they also might have knocked hell out of one another before anything got started.
Max
I wondered if the Sunday Express was trying to make a not too subtly coded comment on the rivalry between Churchill and Chamberlain. Churchill was an old Harrovian – but Chamberlain went to Rugby. What a strange comment though “The rather non-aryan school”. Do I detect a pro-Chamberlain bias from reference (e)?
The Liddell Hart article may have been scaremongering but it was a pretty good description of the naval situation and the importance of the Battle of the Atlantic.
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