The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are
Going Out)
Winston S. Churchill
Broadcast to the United States and to London
Source
I
avail myself with relief of the opportunity of speaking to the people of
the United States. I do not know how long such liberties will be allowed.
The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are
going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and
parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me,
then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.
The
American people have, it seems to me, formed a true judgment upon the
disaster which has befallen Europe. They realise, perhaps more clearly
than the French and British publics have yet done, the far-reaching
consequences of the abandonment and ruin of the Czechoslovak Republic. I
hold to the conviction I expressed some months ago, that if in April, May
or June, Great Britain, France, and Russia had jointly declared that they
would act together upon Nazi Germany if Herr Hitler committed an act of
unprovoked aggression against this small State, and if they had told
Poland, Yugoslavia, and Rumania what they meant to do in good time, and
invited them to join the combination of peace-defending Powers, I hold
that the German Dictator would have been confronted with such a formidable
array that he would have been deterred from his purpose. This would also
have been an opportunity for all the peace-loving and moderate forces in
Germany, together with the chiefs of the German Army, to make a great
effort to re-establish something like sane and civilised conditions in
their own country. If the risks of war which were run by France and
Britain at the last moment had been boldly faced in good time, and plain
declarations made, and meant, how different would our prospects be today!
But all these backward speculations belong to history. It is no
good using hard words among friends about the past, and reproaching one
another for what cannot be recalled. It is the future, not the past, that
demands our earnest and anxious thought. We must recognize that the
Parliamentary democracies and liberal, peaceful forces have everywhere
sustained a defeat which leaves them weaker, morally and physically, to
cope with dangers which have vastly grown. But the cause of freedom has in
it a recuperative power and virtue which can draw from misfortune new hope
and new strength. If ever there was a time when men and women who cherish
the ideals of the founders of the British and American Constitutions
should take earnest counsel with one another, that time is now.
All the world wishes for peace and security. Have we gained it by
the sacrifice of the Czechoslovak Republic. Here was the model democratic
State of Central Europe, a country where minorities were treated better
than anywhere else. It has been deserted, destroyed and devoured. It is
now being digested. The question which is of interest to a lot of ordinary
people, common people, is whether this destruction of the Czechoslovak
Republic will bring upon the world a blessing or a curse.
We must
all hope it will bring a blessing; that after we have averted our gaze for
a while from the process of subjugation and liquidation, everyone will
breathe more freely; that a load will be taken off our chests; we shall be
able to say to ourselves: "Well, that's out of the way, anyhow. Now let's
get on with our regular daily life." But are these hopes well founded or
are we merely making the best of what we had not the force and virtue to
stop? That is the question that the English-speaking peoples in all their
lands must ask themselves today. Is this the end, or is there more to
come?
There is another question which arises out of this. Can
peace, goodwill, and confidence be built upon submission to wrong-doing
backed by force?
One may put this question in the largest form.
Has any benefit or progress ever been achieved by the human race by
submission to organised and calculated violence? As we look back over the
long story of the nations we must see that, on the contrary, their glory
has been founded upon the spirit of resistance to tyranny and injustice,
especially when these evils seemed to be backed by heavier force. Since
the dawn of the Christian era a certain way of life has slowly been
shaping itself among the Western peoples, and certain standards of conduct
and government have come to be esteemed. After many miseries and prolonged
confusion, there arose into the broad light of day the conception of the
right of the individual; his right to be consulted in the government of
his country; his right to invoke the law even against the State itself.
Independent Courts of Justice were created to affirm and inforce this
hard-won custom. Thus was assured throughout the English-speaking world,
and in France by the stern lessons of the Revolution, what Kipling called,
"Leave to live by no man's leave underneath the law." Now in this resides
all that makes existence precious to man, and all that confers honour and
health upon the State.
We are confronted with another theme. It is
not a new theme; it leaps out upon us from the Dark Ages - racial
persecution, religious intolerance, deprivation of free speech, the
conception of the citizen as a mere soulless fraction of the State. To
this has been added the cult of war. Children are to be taught in their
earliest schooling the delights and profits of conquest and aggression. A
whole mighty community has been drawn painfully, by severe privations,
into a warlike frame. They are held in this condition, which they relish
no more than we do, by a party organisation, several millions strong, who
derive all kinds of profits, good and bad, from the upkeep of the regime.
Like the Communists, the Nazis tolerate no opinion but their own. Like the
Communists, they feed on hatred. Like the Communists, they must seek, from
time to time, and always at shorter intervals, a new target, a new prize,
a new victim. The Dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his
Party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his
hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by
them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within. As Byron wrote a hundred
years ago: "These Pagod things of Sabre sway, with fronts of brass and
feet of clay."
No one must, however, underrate the power and
efficiency of a totalitarian state. Where the whole population of a great
country, amiable, good-hearted, peace-loving people are gripped by the
neck and by the hair by a Communist or a Nazi tyranny - for they are the
same things spelt in different ways - the rulers for the time being can
exercise a power for the purposes of war and external domination before
which the ordinary free parliamentary societies are at a grievous
practical disadvantage. We have to recognise this. And then, on top of
all, comes this wonderful mastery of the air which our century has
discovered, but of which, alas, mankind has so far shown itself unworthy.
Here is this air power with its claim to torture and terrorise the women
and children, the civil population of neighbouring countries.
This
combination of medieval passion, a party caucus, the weapons of modern
science, and the blackmailing power of air-bombing, is the most monstrous
menace to peace, order and fertile progress that has appeared in the world
since the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century.
The
culminating question to which I have been leading is whether the world as
we have known it - the great and hopeful world of before the war, the
world of increasing hope and enjoyment for the common man, the world of
honoured tradition and expanding science - should meet this menace by
submission or by resistance. Let us see, then, whether the means of
resistance remain to us today. We have sustained an immense disaster; the
renown of France is dimmed. In spite of her brave, efficient army, her
influence is profoundly diminished. No one has a right to say that
Britain, for all her blundering, has broken her word - indeed, when it was
too late, she was better than her word. Nevertheless, Europe lies at this
moment abashed and distracted before the triumphant assertions of
dictatorial power. In the Spanish Peninsula, a purely Spanish quarrel has
been carried by the intervention, or shall I say the "non-intervention"
(to quote the current Jargon) of Dictators into the region of a world
cause.
But it is not only in Europe that these oppressions
prevail. China is being torn to pieces by a military clique in Japan; the
poor, tormented Chinese people there are making a brave and stubborn
defence. The ancient empire of Ethiopia has been overrun. The Ethiopians
were taught to look to the sanctity of public law, to the tribunal of many
nations gathered in majestic union. But all failed; they were deceived,
and now they are winning back their right to live by beginning again from
the bottom a struggle on primordial lines. Even in South America, the Nazi
regime begins to undermine the fabric of Brazilian society.
Far
away, happily protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, you, the
people of the United States, to whom I now have the chance to speak, are
the spectators, and I may add the increasingly involved spectators of
these tragedies and crimes. We are left in no doubt where American
conviction and sympathies lie; but will you wait until British freedom and
independence have succumbed, and then take up the cause when it is
three-quarters ruined, yourselves alone? I hear that they are saying in
the United States that because England and France have failed to do their
duty therefore the American people can wash their hands of the whole
business. This may be the passing mood of many people, but there is no
sense in it. If things have got much worse, all the more must we try to
cope with them.
For, after all, survey the remaining forces of
civilisation; they are overwhelming. If only they were united in a common
conception of right and duty, there would be no war. On the contrary, the
German people, industrious, faithful, valiant, but alas! lacking in the
proper spirit of civic independence, liberated from their present
nightmare, would take their honoured place in the vanguard of human
society. Alexander the Great remarked that the people of Asia were slaves
because they had not learned to pronounce the word "No." Let that not be
the epitaph of the English-speaking peoples or of Parliamentary democracy,
or of France, or of the many surviving liberal States of Europe.
There, in one single word, is the resolve which the forces of
freedom and progress, of tolerance and good will, should take. It is not
in the power of one nation, however formidably armed, still less is it in
the power of a small group of men, violent, ruthless men, who have always
to cast their eyes back over their shoulders, to cramp and fetter the
forward march of human destiny. The preponderant world forces are upon our
side; they have but to be combined to be obeyed. We must arm. Britain must
arm. America must arm. If, through an earnest desire for peace, we have
placed ourselves at a disadvantage, we must make up for it by redoubled
exertions, and, if necessary, by fortitude in suffering.
We shall,
no doubt, arm. Britain, casting away the habits of centuries, will decree
national service upon her citizens. The British people will stand erect,
and will face whatever may be coming.
But arms -
instrumentalities, as President Wilson called them - are not sufficient by
themselves. We must add to them the power of ideas. People say we ought
not to allow ourselves to be drawn into a theoretical antagonism between
Nazidom and democracy; but the antagonism is here now. It is this very
conflict of spiritual and moral ideas which gives the free countries a
great part of their strength. You see these dictators on their pedestals,
surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their
police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons,
aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like - they boast and vaunt themselves
before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are
afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at
home - all the more powerful because forbidden - terrify them. A little
mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates
are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and
words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons,
airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to
quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these
centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent
and indestructible knowledge?
Dictatorship - the fetish worship of
one man - is a passing phase. A state of society where men may not speak
their minds, where children denounce their parents to the police, where a
business man or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales
about his private opinions; such a state of society cannot long endure if
brought into contact with the healthy outside world. The light of
civilised progress with its tolerances and co-operation, with its
dignities and joys, has often in the past been blotted out. But I hold the
belief that we have now at last got far enough ahead of barbarism to
control it, and to avert it, if only we realise what is afoot and make up
our minds in time. We shall do it in the end. But how much harder our toil
for every day's delay!
Is this a call to war? Does anyone pretend
that preparation for resistance to aggression is unleashing war? I declare
it to be the sole guarantee of peace. We need the swift gathering of
forces to confront not only military but moral aggression; the resolute
and sober acceptance of their duty by the English-speaking peoples and by
all the nations, great and small, who wish to walk with them. Their
faithful and zealous comradeship would almost between night and morning
clear the path of progress and banish from all our lives the fear which
already darkens the sunlight to hundreds of millions of men.
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