using British naval and air bases. Lothian also pointed out that the political advantage of the destroyers-for-bases deal, namely if the British were willing to give up their bases in the Caribbean Sea, Bermuda, and Newfoundland in exchange for 50 elderly destroyers, American public opinion might assume that further concessions from Britain would be granted in exchange for more military aid. Churchill strongly disliked the destroyers-for-bases deal, feeling it was a one-sided transaction and the first step towards the United States taking over the British colonies in the New World, but the shortage of destroyers and the need to draw the United States deeper into a pro-Allied neutrality left him with no choice. In the summer of 1940, Churchill was very concerned about the prospect of a German conquest of Great Britain as the outcome of the on-going Battle of Britain was still undecided, and in the event of a German conquest, planned to make the Royal Navy to the New World to continue the struggle. In this regard, the American demand to take over British naval bases in the Americas was most troubling for Churchill. Lothian advised Churchill that his notion that Roosevelt would ask Congress for a declaration of war if he was reelected to a third term in November 1940 had no basis in fact, saying that at most Roosevelt would maintain a pro-Allied neutrality and that moreover Congress would not declare war on Germany simply because Roosevelt had submitted such a request. In the summer of 1940, Lothian served as the main British negotiator for the destroyers-for-bases deal. Roosevelt was concerned that if he was seen as too generous with the British that if might hamper his chances of being reelected, and as result, the Americans drove a hard bargain, saying the American people would only support the deal if the British made all the concessions. Churchill told the Canadian prime William Lyon Mackenzie King: "We must be careful not to let the Americans view too complacently the prospect of a British collapse out of which they would get the British fleet and the guardianship of the British empire minus Great Britain". On 6 June 1940, Churchill in a dispatch to Washington told Lothian to tell Roosevelt that his government would not sign an armistice with Germany and to warn Roosevelt that if the Reich conquered the United Kingdom, a "Quisling government" would be installed in