IT'S not quite the Falklands - but's it's War. And the relief among the troops is palpable.
For weeks they'd watched the high command pussyfooting around the enemy ranks - resignation and despair mounting as the hapless Corporal Hogg fought lone skirmishes always bound to end in humiliation and defeat.
But on Tuesday, the Commander in Chiefs patience finally ran out. To the delight of Sun readers, Mr John Major, had decided to show his "bulls" at last. The tabloid paper's front page picture cast him as, a British "Beefeater".
If the message was clear, the portrait, alas, made him look daft - his face squeezed between the big black hat and the frilly collar. More inspirational by far was the Daily Express, with the commander in Kitchener pose against a fluttering Union flag. But it was left to the Daily Mail to convey the enormous relief that the phoney peace was over: "Major goes to war at last".
The Tory press, like most of the Tory backbenchers, had been waiting for this moment. The so called "allies" had shown indifference to Britain's national interests, and thus contempt for Britain itself. Monday's refusal to lift even the ban on beef derivatives was final confirmation that they didn't give a fig for the damage done to an industry employing some 650,000 people, worth around £4 billion a year.
No matter that it was Mr Major's ministers who started the scare in the first place, with the admission by the Health Secretary, Mr Stephen Dorrell, admission of a possible link between BSE and CJD. No matter that the damage was done while he and the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Douglas Hogg, awaited further scientific recommendations, only in the end to report that no further measures were required.
"The Germans won't be content until every cow in the country is killed and still they won't eat our beef - not even best Aberdeen angus steak," declared Mrs Theresa Gorman MP yesterday. And in case anyone had forgotten the consequences of appeasement, Mrs Gorman reminded them that they'd seen it all before "when Chamberlain came down the steps of the aeroplane waving a piece of paper . . . And look what happened then!"
Well, not this time. No quarter will be given in "the cattle of Britain". As Mr Major was assembling his war cabinet, the Sun was invoking the wartime community spirit, offering the citizens 20 ways in which to help the effort.
Avoid German beer and wine, prefer Saville Row to Hugo Boss, boycott German matches in Euro 96, cheer on Damon Hill when the Formula One driver trounces Michael Schumacher, pretend you don't understand German tourists, boycott German porn and - if you've got a record of the national anthem, play backwards!
The "buy British" campaign enable the populace to raise a Winnie style salute to "the boors Berlin, the killjoys of Cologne, and the mutts of Munich".
But Mr Major will be the heavy artillery of the veto and a policy of non co operation which threatens to paralyse the business of the EU. He has taken a bold gamble, and is playing for very high stakes.
From abroad comes the complaint that Mr Major is putting party before country. And the party naturally hopes to reap the benefits. Still the worries persist. He has, after all, led them to the top of the mountain before - last time over qualified majority voting.
And leader writers yesterday warned there could be no turning back this time: "If Mr Major gets results, he will be the hero of the hour. If he fails .... even worse if, after one bout of stage managed defiance at Florence, his boldness shrivels into punctured braggadocio, he will bear the blame and the shame", says the Mail.
Those faint hearts at the Guardian, meanwhile, think he's bound to fail. But they fear Mr Major would then be driven into an even more confrontational approach to Europe, guided by the logic of eventual withdrawal - with June the month, possibly, when the surviving remnants of pre Thatcherite Conservatism would finally be washed away by the tides of Europhobia.
What wasn't quite clear was whether the paper welcomed or feared the prospect of "a jingo election" to follow in July!