The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

It was typically stirring stuff, but was, of course, precisely the kind of
rhetoric Halifax and the Tory diehards despaired about – that still spoke of
Britain having a moral duty to the world when logic suggested an
opportunity to get out of their current dire fix should be grabbed with two
hands. Nonetheless, when a Liberal member suggested the PM’s words
reflected the feelings of the whole House, no-one else demurred, even if no
Conservative openly concurred.
The next War Cabinet met soon after in a room at the Commons, and it
was then that the argument between Halifax and Churchill was reopened.
Chamberlain felt it was a ‘rather steamy discussion’. Certainly, Halifax and
Churchill repeated their same arguments for and against mediation.
‘The French are trying to get us on to the slippery slope,’ said Churchill.
‘The position will be entirely different when Germany has made an
unsuccessful attempt to invade this country.’
‘We must not ignore the fact,’ Halifax replied, ‘that we might get better
terms before France went out of the war and our aircraft factories were
bombed, than we might get in three months’ time.’ So it went on, back and
forth, neither giving ground until, at 5 p.m., Churchill asked for an
adjournment and to meet back again at 7 p.m. This was because he had
already arranged to address the entire Cabinet – those not in the War
Cabinet – in his rooms at the Commons.
A crucial moment had now arrived, for during his address to these
senior ministers Churchill hoped to kill Halifax’s proposals once and for all.
On his head, Captain Bill Tennant now wore a tin helmet with the letters
‘SNO’ cut out from the tinfoil of a cigarette packet and stuck on with
sardine oil. It was makeshift, but then that was very much going to be the
name of the game at Dunkirk. Indeed, it was this makeshift approach that
had, by dawn on the 28th, given Operation DYNAMO a faint glimmer of
hope.
Soon after arriving in Dunkirk the previous evening, he had signalled
back to Dover asking for every available craft to head to the beaches east of
the port, but it had been clear that taking soldiers to ships waiting offshore
in rowing boats and other small craft was an extremely slow and laborious
process. Then, at around 10 p.m. the previous evening, Bill had noticed
something significant. The Luftwaffe had pounded the harbour and port
facilities relentlessly, but not the two long moles that extended some 1,600