8th June 1941:

The British entered Syria this morning.

From the Orwell Diaries.

9th April 1941:

The budget has almost knocked the Balkan campaign out of the news. It is the former and not the latter that I overhear people everywhere discussing. [1]

[1] The budget raised the basic rate of income tax to ten shillings in the pound (50%). Peter Davison

From the Orwell Diaries.

7th April 1941:

Belgrade bombed yesterday, and the first official announcement this morning that there is a British army in Greece – 150,000 men, so they say. So the mystery of where the British army in Libya had gone to it at last cleared up, though this had been obvious enough when the British retreated from Benghazi. Impossible to say yet whether the treaty of friendship between Jugo-Slavia and the U.S.S.R. means anything or nothing, but it is difficult to believe that it doesn’t point to a worsening of Russo-German relations. One will get another indication of the Russian attitude when and if the Emperor of Abyssinia is restored – i.e., whether the Russian government recognises him and sends an ambassador to his court.

…Shortage of labour more and more apparent and prices of such things as textiles and furniture rising to a frightening extent …The secondhand furniture trade, after years of depression, is booming … It is evident that calling-up is now being consciously used as a way of silencing undesirables. The reserved age for journalists has been raised to 41 – this won’t bring them in more than a few hundred men, but can be used against individuals whenever desired. It would be comic if after having been turned down for the army on health grounds ten months ago it were suddenly found that my health had improved to just the point at which I was fit to be a private in the Pioneers.

From the Orwell Diaries.