Britain’s public service broadcaster, BBC, asked the British public on Sept. 19: “War May Be Coming. Are We Psychologically Ready?.” The article is a lollapalooza of war hype, opening with their burning questions of the day: “If the UK suddenly found itself at war, would you know what to do? Do you know what would be expected of you?” Its readers are informed that “the government wants us all to start preparing for severe disruption to our lives. It wants us to stockpile canned food and drinking water, strengthen our civic resilience, and plan for the possibility of war.”

The Chief of the Defense Staff, Sir Richard Knighton and retired British Sir General Richard Shirreff, a former NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander specializing in Russophobe rants, provide needed quotes about “the Russian threat”; one Margaret MacMillan, a “historian,” opines that the danger is that the British public has “become used to the idea that peace is the normal state of affairs.” (God forbid!) Conscription is needed in the UK, the BBC piece argues, providing lengthy details on how the Finns and the Norwegians have introduced conscription and are integrating their civilian and military institutions.

A Sept. 18 article in The Telegraph, “Putin Is Preparing to Escalate War,” feeds the war environment, screaming that Western and Ukrainian intelligence believe Vladimir Putin may be preparing to call up as many as 300,000 more troops after the Russian elections end on Sept. 20; all aimed at Europe, of course. That’s standard fare for The Telegraph, but this piece includes a final subhead, “Predatory Madness,” which features similar war hysteria in France.

French President Emmanuel Macron “summoned French leaders to a three-hour meeting with intelligence chiefs on Friday, which reportedly left some politicians shaken,” The Telegraph reports. Its cited source is an X post by Guillaume Lacroix, head of the Radical Party of the Left, who posted on X after participating in the meeting with the President, intelligence and security services, that “at the age of 50, I have rarely felt such vertigo. Vertigo at the gravity of the situation in the Middle East and Ukraine, at the predatory madness driving the world toward chaos…. Our democracy, our country must already face up to it today and will have to stand firm tomorrow.’”