t continually felt an immediate and direct threat to its survival interests in the form of a German invasion and conquest; in 1940 this threat was realized.
A nation may define its survival interests not simply in terms of actual invasion, but in terms of conditions which would make invasion possible. The classic instance of this is the British perception of the importance of its sea power. There can be little doubt that from the eighteenth century or even Elizabethan times until World War II, the British consistantly viewed Royal Navy predominance, at least in the English Channel and Narrow Seas, as a survival interest. This is the meaning of Churchill's remark, during World War I, that British Admiral Jellicoe was the one man who could lose the war in an afternoon. By World War II, the British perceived the vital interest in command of the adjacent seas as extending to the air: thus they regarded the "Battle of Britain" as decisiv
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