On the morning of the Norway debate, the press was also predicting a government victory. The spirit of rebellion “does not run so deep [in the Conservative Party] that the Prime Minister will be embarrassed in the House of Commons today,” said the Daily Express. The Manchester Guardian took a similar line. “When it comes to a choice between accepting the present government or finding an alternative . . . even the most critical Tories, never mind the everlasting ‘Yes men,’ will pause.” The Daily Mail offered the most succinct and credible explanation of why the government would prevail: David Margesson. Nature had endowed the Conservative chief whip with the qualities of personality essential to the efficient conduct of a whip’s duties: a bullying manner; an encyclopedic memory for slights, double crosses, and wrong votes; and a bottomless supply of invective. “You utterly contemptible little piece of shit,” Margesson snarled at one young Tory MP who failed to vote as instructed, and the MP considered himself fortunate to have gotten off so lightly. The denial of patronage, of campaign funds, and of appointments to important parliamentary committees; insidious whispering campaigns: the chief whip had a cornucopia of political punishments, and he sprinkled them like fairy dust over the errant, the rebellious, and the careless. “Brave politicians have been known to quake before the Chief Whip,” said the Daily Mail.

One of the few journalists to express skepticism about the government’s prospects was a Guardian reporter whose weekend of man-on-the-street interviews had revealed an important change in public opinion. People were now personalizing Britain’s military setbacks. They “talk of Chamberlain—rather than the Government. They say, ‘Why did Chamberlain say this or that?’ [Or] it’s like Chamberlain to believe ‘this or that.’ Some of the phrases used by the Prime Minister have been so unfortunate . . . that they have stuck in the [public’s] mind.” In an editorial, the Guardian said, “Whatever happens today, it is unlikely that Mr. Chamberlain will remain in office much longer. He is losing ground.”

The morning cabinet meeting on May 7 helped the prime minister put his political concerns into perspective. A new intelligence report indicated that the Chiefs of Staff had gotten it seriously wrong in Review of the Strategical Situation. The report warned of an imminent German offensive in the West, perhaps as imminent as the next day or the day after. Such warnings had become almost routine since Hoenmanns’s plane crash in January, but the Dutch, who expected to be attacked first, found the new report sufficiently convincing to suspend all army, navy, and air force leaves and to cancel all outgoing and incoming calls to the Netherlands. How should Britain respond if the report were to be proved true? the ministers were asked.

Sam Hoare, the new secretary of state for air and usually a reliable “wet” on matters of national security, took an unexpectedly aggressive stance. “If we fail to take immediate advantage of the German invasion of Holland to launch our air attack on Germany, an opportunity so favorable to us might never recur.” Churchill, who spoke next, also sounded out of character. The first lord urged restraint. “It would be very dangerous and undesirable to take the initiative in opening unrestricted warfare at a time when we possessed only a quarter of the striking power of the German air force.”

Kingsley Wood, the minister without portfolio, raised another objection to a British first strike. In response to a request from President Roosevelt the previous autumn, Britain had pledged not to wage an unrestricted air war unless Germany did. “We [should] scrupulously observe the rules until they have been broken by the enemy,” Wood said. After some discussion, the cabinet agreed that the decision about a British response should be postponed until the matter was studied further. Then the ministers dispersed, some worrying about the next day and the day after that; some worrying about that afternoon.

Just before three, Henry Channon ran into the prime minister in the Commons. “We chatted for a moment,” Channon wrote in his diary that night, “but it was he who made the conversation, as I was suddenly stilled by my affection for him.” Channon’s affection was the last bit of human warmth Chamberlain would experience that day.

At 3:48 p.m., the prime minister rose from his seat and approached the dispatch box, the traditional forum for ministerial speeches. Normally at such moments Chamberlain was a supremely commanding figure. But that afternoon there was a tentativeness to him. The gleam of self-satisfaction was missing from his smile, conviction from his voice. Standing at the box, surveying the raucous House, he looked like a matador who had lost his nerve; and the House, always quick to sense vulnerability in a minister, pounced. Jeers and sneers rippled through the backbenches; the Speaker gaveled the session to order and Chamberlain began.

He “spoke haltingly and . . .