Page "John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort" Paragraph 19

On 21 December Gort recommended to the Chiefs of Staff that Britain would need to help France defend Holland and Belgium and that for that purpose the British Army needed complete equipment for four Regular army infantry divisions and two mobile armoured divisions, with the Territorial army armed with training equipment and then war equipment for four divisions.

The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Roger Blackhouse, replied that Britain's continental commitment might not be a limited liability.

Gort replied: " Lord Kitchener had clearly pointed out that no great country can wage a “ little ” war ".

He also attacked as a fallacy the theory of strategic mobility by the use of seapower because in modern war land transport was faster and cheaper than by the sea.

The experience of David Lloyd George's 1917 Alexandretta project " proved that side-shows invariably led to vast commitments out of all proportion to the value of the object attained ".

If a purely defensive position was taken the Maginot Line would be broken and that the British Army ( with anti-aircraft defence ) was only getting £ 277 million out of a total £ 2, 000 million spent on defence.