LONDON LETTER
495
tween five and twenty-five hours a week. Since the whole thing is volun–
tary there is no way of enforcing attendance, but the habitual absentees
are usually asked to resign, and the inactive membership at any one time
would not be more than ten per cent. In the case of invasion the Home
Guard will be put on the same disciplinary basis as the regular army and
members will be paid for their services, all ranks receiving the same rate
of payment. In the beginning the Home Guard was a heterogeneous force
and structu -ally rather similar to the early Spanish militias, but it has
been gradually brigaded on the lines of the regular army, and all the
ordinary contingents are affiliated to the regiments belonging to their
locality. But factories, railways and Government offices have their own
separate units, which are responsible only for the defence of their own
premises.
The strategic idea of the Home Guard is static defence in
complete
depth, i.e. from one coast of England to the other. The tactical idea is not
so much to defeat an invader as to hold him up till the regular troops can
get
~t
him. It is not intended that the Home Guard shall manreuvre in
large numbers or over large areas. In practice it probably could not be
cperated in any larger unit than the Company, and no one contingent
could advance or retreat more than a few miles. The intention is that any
invader who crosses any section of the country will always, until he
reaches the sea coast, have innumerable small bimds of enemies both
behind and in front of him. As to
how
the invader can best be resisted,
theories have varied, chiefly as a result of observation of the different cam–
paigns abroad. At the beginning the intention was simply to deal with
parachutists, but the events in France and the Low Countries had caused
an exaggerated fear of Fifth Columnists, and the authorities had evidently
some notion of turning the Home Guard into a sort of auxiliary police
force. This idea came to nothing because the men who had joined only
wanted to fight the Germans (in June 1940 the invasion was expected to
happen almost immediately), and in the chaotic conditions of the time
they had to do their organizing for themselves. When enough weapons
and uniforms had been distributed to make the Home Guard look some–
thing like soldiers, the tendency was to turn them into ordinary infantry
of the pre-blitzkrieg type. Then the success of the Germans in getting
their armoured divisions across the sea to Libya shifted the emphasis to
anti-tank fighting. Somewhat later the loss of Crete showed what can be
done by parachutists and air-borne troops, and tactics for dealing with
them were worked out. Finally the struggle of the Russian guerillas behind
the German lines led to a renewed emphasis on guerilla tactics and sabo–
tage. All of these successive tendencies are reflected in the voluminous
literature, official and unofficial, which has already grown up round the
Home Guard.
The Home Guard can by now be regarded as a serious force, capable
of strong resistance for at any rate a short
perio~.
No invader could travel
