War Speech.
Winston
Churchill.
Delivered to the House of
Commons.
Source
In this solemn hour it is a consolation to recall and to dwell upon our
repeated efforts for peace. All have been ill-starred, but all have been
faithful and sincere. This is of the highest moral value--and not only
moral value, but practical value--at the present time, because the
wholehearted concurrence of scores of millions of men and women, whose
co-operation is indispensable and whose comradeship and brotherhood are
indispensable, is the only foundation upon which the trial and tribulation
of modern war can be endured and surmounted. This moral
conviction alone affords that ever-fresh resilience which renews the
strength and energy of people in long, doubtful and dark days. Outside,
the storms of war may blow and the lands may be lashed with the fury of
its gales, but in our own hearts this Sunday morning there is
peace. Our hands may be active, but our consciences are at
rest.
We must not underrate the gravity of the task which lies
before us or the temerity of the ordeal, to which we shall not be found
unequal. We must expect many disappointments, and many
unpleasant surprises, but we may be sure that the task which we have
freely accepted is one not beyond the compass and the strength of the
British Empire and the French Republic. The Prime Minister said it was a
sad day, and that is indeed true, but at the present time there is another
note which may be present, and that is a feeling of thankfulness that, if
these great trials were to come upon our Island, there is a generation of
Britons here now ready to prove itself not unworthy of the days of yore
and not unworthy of those great men, the fathers of our land, who laid the
foundations of our laws and shaped the greatness of our
country.
This is not a question of fighting for Danzig or fighting
for Poland. We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of
Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is most sacred to man. This is no
war of domination or imperial aggrandizement or material gain; no war to
shut any country out of its sunlight and means of progress. It is a war,
viewed in its inherent quality, to establish, on impregnable rocks, the
rights of the individual, and it is a war to establish and revive the
stature of man. Perhaps it might seem a paradox that a war undertaken in
the name of liberty and right should require, as a necessary part of its
processes, the surrender for the time being of so many of the dearly
valued liberties and rights. In these last few days the House of Commons
has been voting dozens of Bills which hand over to the executive our most
dearly valued traditional liberties. We are sure that these liberties will
be in hands which will not abuse them, which will use them for no class or
party interests, which will cherish and guard them, and we look forward to
the day, surely and confidently we look forward to the day, when our
liberties and rights will be restored to us, and when we shall be able to
share them with the peoples to whom such blessings are unknown.
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