As the London terror attacks were announced late Saturday, the city’s Metropolitan Police Service issued a warning for Londoners to “run, hide, and tell.” (Hence, my Neville Chamberlain Photoshop above.)

The alert system was created after a series of attacks in Paris last year. The UK’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office published advice on what the public should do in a major terror incident. The intention is to get civilians out of the way of both terrorists and security forces, especially since the British public has been effectively disarmed due to aggressive gun and knife control laws.

Instructing Londoners to run, hide, and tell is a dramatic departure from the can-do, stiff-upper-lip, globe-striding empire of a century ago. Here’s how life during wartime looked to Britons not so long ago:

Today, the “young lions” are hard to find. The sheep, however, are plentiful.