July 24, 2013

FINEST HOUR 124, AUTUMN 2004

BY WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

ABSTRACT
House oF Commons, 3 September 1939

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These remarks at the outbreak of the Second World War were initially omitted from Into Battle, the first volume of Churchill’s war speeches, but quickly tipped into the second state of the first edition. They appear also in Blood, Sweat and Tears (the American/Canadian edition of Into Battle) and “Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, Robert Rhodes James, editor, New York: Bowker, 1974, vol. VI. They are typeset, as is our wont with this column, in an approximation of “Speech Form,” whereby Churchill was able to move so smoothly from phrase to phrase.

A student visitor to our website asked for this speech. In the process of transcribing it I was struck by its relevance. Of course we are not officially “at war.” There has been no war declaration. Some believe there should have been. Substitute “Afghanistan” and “Iraq” for “Danzig” and “Poland,” and delete the qualifier “Nazi,” and one can almost imagine these words being said today in justification for limits on civil liberties: which are, as Churchill observed, justifiable only in wartime. —Ed.

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 cooperation 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 defence 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 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