I have been interested this week in ascertaining and noting
down various shades of opinion throughout the country. Those who are really in the know are reticent and firm. Those who are half in the know are also reticent but asking for more vigorous action. Those who know next to nothing are voluble and full of bright suggestions. Those who know absolutely nothing desire only to get on with their work. No disunity appears to exist either as to the causes or the purposes of this war. Whether in London or the Midlands these intricate problems have been reduced to their simplest formula. We were forced into the war by the " senseless ambition of one man," and the disappearance of this man, and the system which he represents, is essential before we can settle down to any form of tranquillity. In other words, we are fighting to restore security to Europe. At the moment, perhaps, it is advantageous that the issue should assume this concentrated and even personal form. I have been distressed to observe, however, that beneath this surface conviction there exists a deep bewilderment. Inevitably the sudden transition from peace to war must produce confusion both of thought and action. The mind of the public has not had time as yet to settle down: they fumble in the black-out, and their former land-marks arc obscured. Their accustomed sources of information and judgement seem suddenly to have dried up at the source, and all that they obtain, in place of their full and varied diet of information, is a digestive but all too uniform biscuit supplied by the Ministry. As an eventual formula the destruc- tion of Hitlerism is not enough. It is essential that we should provide the British people with some deeper faith and the German people with some wider hope. Here is one of the first tasks which must be studied by the Ministry of Information. It is not an easy task. The for- mulation of specific and detailed war-aims in the early stages of a long war would be a grave political error ; if the aims be too precise, they fortify the resistance of the enemy ; if they be too ambiguous, they provide no stimulus to our own energies and endurance.
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