But suppose there were left a British naval force large enough when taken in combination with what we could spare from the Pacific to continue to maintain practical control of the Atlantic, enough anyway to prevent any German attempt at sending an invading army to America. Could we then expect this remnant of the British Navy to retire to Canada or the United States, and continue resistance to the Germans? I do not think so. In the first place, what would be the purpose of the British Navy in continuing resistance to the Germans after the British Isles had been captured? Would it be for the purpose of eventually reconquering the British Isles? No, because that would be impossible. This is one of those grim facts which are too ugly for most people to look at, but there is no use turning our eyes away and refusing to see that if the Germans do invade and conquer the British Isles, the British people will have finished their life. It would be the end for them, not for the duration of this war, which would in fact be ended then, but for as far into the future as the imagination can travel. The Germans might remain in possession of the British Isles or in effective control for the thousand years Hitler so often boasts about, or until they became weak through centuries of good living. Hitler would disarm the people of Britain and allow hunger to decimate them. He could count on forty per cent of the population dying of starvation in a year or so. Does this seem an exaggeration? It is only one more of those facts about Hitler which nobody would believe. The trusting Dutch would not believe what Hitler was like until he taught the people of Rotterdam. But the British people have now learned their lesson. They have totally lost the wide-eyed faith of our Lindberghs, that Hitler is “human after all.” The British know Hitler would do just what I have said, he would deliberately destroy a great part of the population, allowing to remain alive only those sufficiently broken to become good slaves. But why, you ask, could not the British Navy reconquer the British Isles, if they had our wholehearted help? The answer is that there would be no base from which to operate.