Survival and the dramatic transformation in the character of the war were the issues with which the Cabinet struggled throughout the twelve months from the fall of France to Hitler's ultimately fateful attack on the Soviet Union. In policy-making terms, this produced a tension between the inevitable involvement of all ministers in a period of prolonged, unprecedented national crisis and the circumstantial needs for decisive personal leadership and diminished accountability from those responsible for grand strategy. In the first phase of the crisis, as we have seen, this led to emotion and uncertainty in Cabinet, resolved by the strength of Churchill's will and vision in a situation which was conducive to the assertion of prime ministerial initiatives. After the first febrile weeks, however, while the crisis remained, its temperature was sufficiently lowered to enable ministers to take a longer perspective on the war and its prospects. In particular, this meant that the discussion of war aims rose once again to the surface, and the coalition Cabinet wrestled for the first time with the strains of conducting day-to-day military campaigns at the same time as debating a putative post-war order. They attempted this task largely through the device of delegation to Cabinet committees, and it is the performance of these committees which forms the subject of this last case-study chapter. To what extent did they provide the means for a genuinely collective consideration of war aims, or for the mobilisation of special views and interests? How far, by contrast, could they be manipulated or ignored by a Prime Minister who was taking increasing strength from his evident indispensability?