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May the Nazis' Stay in Jersey Be Brief!

The War Illustrated, Volume 3, No. 50, Page 159, August 16, 1940.

Good reasons enough have been advanced for the abandonment of the Channel Islands to the enemy; but those reasons do not appeal to everyone. "It was honestly meant", said Lord Portsea in the House of Lords on August 1, "but in my view there was a smell of cowardice about it". Lord Portsea belongs to an old Jersey family – his father was one of the judges of the Royal Court of Jersey – and the bitterness of his words will be understood. The Channel Islands had bot been conquered for over a thousand years he went on; the argument that the inhabitants had at least been spared the horrors of modern warfare and bombardment was, in his opinion, a Pétain argument, and he had no sympathy with it. "I am a very old man", he added, "but do not imagine that because the sands of life are running out those sands are less hallowed. They are hoarded with miserly care. I say to this House in all honesty that if I could go to submit to that bombardment with any chance whatever of recovering those islands I would go today." In conclusion, he appealed to the Government to "do something for my fellow-countrymen" - an appeal which was at once answered in the most sympathetic spirit by the Duke of Devonshire.

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