Speech notes for WSC's speech (2 July) on the central direction of the war including: setbacks in Egypt and Cyrenaica [Libya] including the fall of Tobruk to forces under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and WSC's confidence in General Claude Auchinleck [Commander-in-Chief Middle East]; press coverage of the war and the freedom of war correspondents; his meeting with President Roosevelt and the strength of the alliance with the United States; ship-building and the production and deployment of tanks; the defence of Malta; allocation of forces to the Middle East; analysis of the Panzer army; events and operations in the Soviet Union; his position and the Vote of Censure which aimed to remove him from his position as Minister of Defence; and American achievements against the Japanese. Also includes sections of the speech annotated with suggestions by [General Sir Alan Brooke, later 1st Lord Alanbrooke] Chief of Imperial General Staff and [Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal] Chief of Air Staff; correspondence from Sydney Redman [Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for War]; Ronald Melville [Private Secretary to Secretary of State for Air]; Rear Admiral Alan Kirk [Chief of Staff, United States Navy); Sir Edward Bridges [Secretary to the Cabinet] (3); Francis Turnbull [Principal Private Secretary to Secretary of State for India]; Sir Arthur Poynton [Private Secretary to the Minister of Supply and Production]; Oliver [Lyttelton, later 1st Lord Chandos] Minister of Production; Clifford Jarrett [Principal Private Secretary to First Lord of the Admiralty]; John Morris and James Stuart [Government Chief Whip]; General Jan Smuts [Prime Minister of South Africa]; Sir John Wardlaw-Milne; Brigadier James Edmonds; and 1st Lord Cherwell [earlier Frederick Lindemann]; copies of correspondence and notes from: Francis Brown [Assistant Private Secretary to WSC]; John Martin [Private Secretary to WSC], from Leslie Rowan [Principal Private Secretary to WSC], Colonel Harvie Watt [Parliamentary Private Secretary to WSC], and Anthony Bevir [Private Secretary to WSC]; notes on the division on the Vote of Censure, extracts from Hansard and a report on Axis propaganda. Published: Complete Speeches VI, pp 6645-61.