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.