ABSTRACT
The comparatively easy-going ‘kindergarten’ warm-up period between Dunkirk and July 10th; and the ‘battle school’ weeks from July 10th until the enemy’s Eagle Day of August 13th. Britain began to heave with a great uplift of hearts which her Empire, now the Commonwealth, came to know as the Battle of Britain Spirit. An unrepeatable product of national inspiration, that spirit of 1940 is still held up by reflective magistrates and parsons as an example to the wayward and the erring, and each September its memory is perpetuated by the religious observance of Battle of Britain Day. Gas masks, incidentally, were being stacked up in lost property offices at a rate of 100 a day. The German Navy, less boastful and more realistic than the Air Force, which it regarded as a somewhat upstart service, counselled longer all-round preparation now that the delay since Dunkirk had lessened the chances of a quick victory in the air.
