ABSTRACT
Morton spent 1938 and 1939 preparing for a conflict he had long thought inevitable. British military authorities had, in theory at least, been planning since 1934 on the premise that ‘our forces may have to be employed in five years from the present date, ie the end of 1939, and against a Germany in such a state of preparedness as she is likely to reach by that time’.1 Even if the translation from planning to preparation had been imperfect and incomplete, the idea that war with Germany was a strong possibility by 1939 underlay the counsels of all the committees charged with the consideration of defensive and counter-offensive measures, committees on which Morton sat or to which he submitted the IIC’s detailed economic intelligence reports.2
