1. To his too coy colleagues

2. Had we but world enough, and time,

3. This slowness, gentles, were no crime.

4. We might consume each livelong day

5. Discussing how can debtors pay.

6. John Maynard should delight our wits

7. Describing how each project fits.

8. James Meade should still expound the laws

9. of economics, clause by clause

10. Stout Melville might his land defend

11. Demanding what the world shall lend.

12. Mackintosh’ speech would slowly burn

13. Into our hearts his great concern

14. For all that helps to foster trade.

15. McCarthy'd call a spade a spade.

16. From Clauson and Sir David Meek

17. We'd cynically learn to speak

18. In praise of regulation schemes,

19. Which Dennis Robertson just deems

20. The deuce. Such talks could last no doubt

21. For two years more or thereabout.

22. But at my back I always hear

23. Joe Stalin’s cohorts thundering near.

24. We can't expect the war to last

25. Till all our problems are o'er past.

26. The other nations may complain

27. That we had racked our brains in vain.

28. We do not wish to leave to Joe

29. Decisions on the way we go.

By the end of 1943 the Allies had determined on an invasion of France (Operation Overlord) in the spring of 1944. Although its exact time and place could not be known, it could be roughly predicted given the need for suitable weather and tides. Assuming it was successful, the war in Europe could end in 1944. In January Allied efforts in Italy, which had been making slow progress since the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, intensified with the landing of British and American forces at Anzio. In Russia the siege of Leningrad was lifted on 25 January. But the Luftwaffe returned to bomb London nightly; and even before the ‘little Blitz’ there was the threat of new weapons that Hitler was planning to launch on London: Lionel discouraged his children from visiting London during the Christmas holidays without telling them the reason (Sansom 1947, 176–83; LCR to IER, 9 July 1944).