March 28, 2013

FINEST HOUR 154, SPRING 2012

BY WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

First published in volume form in Winston S. Churchill, The Unrelenting Struggle (London: Cassell, 1942). Reprinted by kind permission of Randolph S. Churchill and Curtis Brown Ltd. Text verified against the original broadcast recording by Ronald I. Cohen. Audio available here. 

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ABSTRACT
On the evening of the 28th, Dr. Wilson’s cardiac case departed for Ottawa by train to address the Canadian Parliament and similarly not exert himself until New Year’s Eve….It may have been some consolation to Wilson as he and Churchill boarded their Washington-bound train on the evening of the 31st that, even if Canada had not been exactly restful for his patient, it at least had served as a tonic.” —Robert Pilpel, Churchillin America,1976

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Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate and Members of the House of Commons, it is with feelings of pride and encouragement that I
find myself here in the House of Commons of Canada, invited to address the Parliament of the senior Dominion of the Crown. I am very glad to see again my old friend Mr. Mackenzie King, for fifteen out of twenty years your Prime Minister, and I thank him for the all too complimentary terms in which he has referred to myself. I bring you, Mr. Speaker, the assurance of good will and affection from everyone in the Motherland. We are most grateful for all you have done in the common cause, and we know that you are resolved to do whatever more is possible as the need arises and as opportunity serves. [Applause] Canada, Sir, occupies a unique position in the British Empire because of its unbreakable ties with Britain and its ever-growing friendship and intimate association with the United States. [Applause]. Canada is a potent magnet, drawing together those in the new world and in the old whose fortunes are now united in a deadly struggle for life and honour against the common foe. The contribution of Canada to the Imperial war effort in troops, in ships, in air-craft, in food, and in finance has been magnificent.

“‘IT IS TRUE THAT HE SEEMS TO REVEL IN EVERY MINUTE,’ THE TROUBLED PHYSICIAN WROTE IN HIS DIARY, ‘BUT LITTLE THINGS, STRAWS IN THE WIND,WARN ME THAT A PRICE MUST BE PAID FOR FLOUTING NATURE.’ WILSON’S FEARS MAY HAVE BEEN JUSTIFIED, BUT NATURE SEEMED DISPOSED TO FORGIVE THE DEBTS CHURCHILL WAS RUNNING UP. HE WAS IN HIS ELEMENT, ‘A JOVIAL KEWPIE PUFFING A CIGAR,’ AS ONE REPORTER PUT IT, AND THE TRIP TO CANADA MADE HIM JOLLIER STILL.” —Robert Pilpel, Churchill in America, 1976

The Canadian Army now stationed in England has chafed not to have been in contact with the enemy. But I am here to tell you that it has stood and still stands in the key position to strike at the invader should he land upon our shores. [Applause] In a few months, when the invasion season returns, the Canadian Army may be engaged in one of the most frightful battles the world has ever seen; on the other hand, their presence may help to deter the enemy from attempting to fight such a battle on British soil. Although, Sir, the long routine of training and preparation is undoubtedly trying to men who left prosperous farms and businesses, or other responsible civil work, inspired by an eager and ardent desire to fight the enemy, although this is trying to high-mettled temperaments, the value of the service rendered is unquestionable, and the peculiar kind of self-sacrifice involved will, I am sure, be cheerfully or at least patiently endured.

Sir, the Canadian Government have imposed no limitations upon the use of the Canadian Army, whether upon the Continent of Europe or elsewhere, and I think it extremely unlikely that this war will end without the Canadian Army coming to close quarters with the Germans, as their fathers did at Ypres, on the Somme, or on the Vimy Ridge. [Applause] Already at Hong Kong, that beautiful colony which the industry and mercantile enterprise of Britain had raised from a desert isle and made the greatest port of shipping in the whole world—at Hong Kong, that Colony wrested from us for a time until we reach the peace table, by the overwhelming power of the Home Forces of Japan, to which it lay in proximity—at Hong Kong, Canadian soldiers of the Royal Rifles of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers, under a brave officer whose loss we mourn, have played a valuable part in gaining precious days, and have crowned with honour, with military honour the reputation of their native land. [Applause]

Another major contribution made by Canada to the Imperial war effort is the wonderful and gigantic Empire training scheme for pilots for the Royal and Imperial Air Forces. This has now been, as you know well, in full career for nearly two years under conditions free from all interference by the enemy. The daring youth of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, with many thousands from the Homeland, are perfecting their training under the best conditions, and we are being assisted on a large scale by the United States, many of whose training facilities have been placed at our disposal. This scheme will provide us in 1942 and 1943 with the highest class of trained pilots, observers and air gunners in the numbers necessary to man the enormous flow of aircraft which the factories of Britain, of the Empire and of the United States are and will be producing.

I could, Sir, speak also on the naval production of corvettes and above all of merchant ships which is proceeding on a scale almost equal to the building of the United Kingdom, all of which Canada has set on foot. I could speak of many other activities, of tanks, of the special forms of modern high-velocity cannon, of the great supplies of raw materials and many other elements essential to our war effort on which your labours are ceaselessly and tirelessly engaged. But I must not let my address to you become a catalogue, so I turn to less technical fields of thought.

Sir, we did not make this war, we did not seek it. We did all we could to avoid it. We did too much to avoid it. [Applause] We went so far in trying to avoid it as to be almost destroyed by it when it broke upon us. But that dangerous corner has been turned, and with every month and every year that passes we shall confront the evil-doers with weapons as plentiful, as sharp, and as destructive as those with which they have sought to establish their hateful domination.

I should like to point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that we have not at any time asked for any mitigation in the fury or malice of the enemy. The peoples of the British Empire may love peace. They do not seek the lands or wealth of any country, but they are a tough and hardy lot. We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy. [Applause]

Look at the Londoners, the Cockneys; look what they have stood up to. Grim and gay with their cry, “We can take it,” and their war-time mood, “What’s good enough for anybody is good enough for us.”

We have not asked that the rules of the game should be modified. We shall never descend to the German and Japanese level, but if anybody likes to play rough we can play rough, too. [Applause] Hitler and his Nazi gang [applause] have sown the wind; let them reap the whirlwind. Neither the length of the struggle nor any form of severity which it may assume will make us weary or will make us quit.

I have been all this week with the President of the United States [applause], that great man [applause] whom destiny has marked for this climax of human fortune. We have been concerting the united pacts and resolves of more than thirty states and nations to fight on in unity together and in fidelity one with another, without any thought except the total and final extirpation of the Hitler tyranny, of the Japanese frenzy, and the Mussolini flop. [Applause]

There will be no halting, or half measures, there will be no compromise, or parley. These gangs of bandits have sought to darken the light of the world, have sought to stand between the common people of all the lands and their march forward into their inheritance. They shall themselves be cast into the pit of death and shame, and only when the earth has been cleansed and purged of their crimes and of their villainies will we turn from the task which they have forced upon us, a task which we were reluctant to undertake, but which we shall now most faithfully and punctiliously discharge. [Applause]

Mr. Speaker, this is no time, according to my sense of proportion, this is no time to speak of the hopes of the future, or of the broader world which lies beyond our struggles and our victory. We have to win that world for our children. We have to win it by our sacrifices. We have not won it yet. The crisis is upon us. The power of the enemy is immense. If we were in any way to underrate the strength, the resources or the ruthless savagery of that enemy, we should jeopardize, not only our lives, for they will be offered freely, but the cause of human freedom and progress to which we have vowed ourselves and all we have. We cannot, Sir, for a moment afford to relax. On the contrary, we must drive ourselves forward with unrelenting zeal.

In this strange, terrible World War, there is a place for everyone, man and woman, old and young, hale and halt; service in a thousand forms is open. There is no room now for the dilettante, for the weakling, for the shirker, for the sluggard. The mines, the factory, the dockyard, the salt sea waves, the fields to till, the home, the hospital, the chair of the scientist, the pulpit of the preacher—from the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honour; all have their part to play. The enemies ranged against us, coalesced and combined against us, have asked for total war. Let us make sure they get it. [Applause]

That grand old minstrel, Harry Lauder—Sir Harry Lauder, I should say, and no honour was better deserved— had a song in the last War which began, “If we all look back to the history of the past, we can just tell where we are.” Let us then look back. Sir, we plunged into this war all unprepared because we had pledged our word to stand by the side of Poland, which Hitler had feloniously invaded, and in spite of a gallant resistance had soon struck down. There followed that astonishing seven months which were called on this side of the Atlantic the “phoney” war. Suddenly the explosion of pent-up German strength and preparation burst upon Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium. All these absolutely blameless neutrals, to most of whom Germany up to the last moment was giving every kind of guarantee and assurance, were overrun and trampled down.

The hideous massacre of Rotterdam, where 30,000 people perished, showed the ferocious barbarism in which the German Air Force revels when, as in Warsaw and later in Belgrade, it was able to bomb practically undefended cities.

“HAVING COMPLETED THE OUTLINE OF THE OTTAWA SPEECH, HE HAD PUT IT ASIDE….ON THE EVENING BEFORE HE HAD TO DELIVER IT NOT A WORD WAS ON PAPER. SUPERHUMAN EFFORTS BY HIS STAFF AND THE GOVERNOR- GENERAL’S TYPISTS PRODUCED THE FINAL VERSION IN TIME, BUT THEN, AT THE VERY LAST MINUTE,THE PM DECIDED TO SCRAP ONE ENTIRE PAGE AND DICTATE A FRESH PASSAGE….HE HAD ALREADY BEGUN HIS ADDRESS WHEN THE MISSING SHEET WAS SLIPPED INTO HIS HAND.” —Gerald Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, 1963

On top of all this came the great French catastrophe. The French Army collapsed, and the French nation was dashed into utter and, as it has proved so far, irretrievable confusion. The French Government had at their own suggestion solemnly bound themselves with us not to make a separate peace. It was their duty and it was also their interest to go to North Africa, where they would have been at the head of the French Empire. In Africa, with our aid, they would have had overwhelming sea power. They would have had the recognition of the United States and the use of all the gold they had lodged beyond the seas. If they had done this, Italy might have been driven out of the war before the end of 1940, and France would have held her place as a nation in the counsels of the Allies and at the conference table of the victors. But their generals misled them.

When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” Some chicken! [Applause] Some neck! [Applause]

What a contrast has been the behaviour of the valiant, stout-hearted Dutch [applause], who still stand forth as a strong living partner in the struggle! Their venerated Queen and Government are in England; their Princess and her children have found asylum and protection here in your midst. [Applause] But the Dutch nation are defending their Empire with dogged courage and tenacity by land and sea and in the air. Their submarines are inflicting a heavy daily toll upon the Japanese robbers who have come across the seas to steal the wealth of the East Indies, and ravage and exploit its fertility and its civilization. The British Empire and the United States are going to the aid of the Dutch. We are going to fight out this new war against Japan together. [Applause] We have suffered together and we shall conquer together. [Applause]

But the men of Bordeaux, the men of Vichy, they would do nothing like this. They lay prostrate at the foot of the conqueror. They fawned upon him. What have they got out of it? The fragment of France which was left to them is just as powerless, just as hungry, and even more miserable because more divided, than the occupied regions themselves. Hitler plays from day to day a cat-and-mouse game with these tormented men. One day he will charge them a little less for holding their countrymen down. Another day he will let out a few thousand broken prisoners of war from the million and a half or million and three-quarter he has collected. Or again he will shoot a hundred French hostages to give them a taste of the lash. On these blows and favours the Vichy Government have been content to live from day to day. But even this will not go on indefinitely. At any moment it may suit Hitler’s plans to brush them away. Their only guarantee is Hitler’s good faith, which, as everyone knows, biteth like the adder and stingeth like the asp. [Applause]

Some Frenchmen there were who would not bow their knees and who, under General de Gaulle, have continued the fight on the side of the Allies. [Applause] They have been condemned to death by the men of Vichy, but their names will be held and are being held in increasing respect by nine Frenchmen out of every ten throughout the once happy, smiling land of France. [Applause] But now, Sir, strong forces are at hand. The tide has turned against the Hun. Britain, which the men of Bordeaux thought and then hoped would soon be finished, Britain with her Empire around her carried the weight of the war alone for a whole long year through the darkest part of the valley. She is growing stronger every day. [Applause] You can see it here in Canada. Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of our affairs is aware that very soon we shall be superior in every form of equipment to those who have taken us at the disadvantage of being but half-armed. [Applause]

The Russian armies, under their warrior leader [applause], Josef Stalin, are waging furious war with increasing success along the thousand-mile front of their invaded country. General Auchinleck, at the head of a British, South African, New Zealand and Indian army, is striking down and mopping up the German and Italian forces who had attempted the invasion of Egypt. [Applause] Not only, Sir, are they being mopped up in the desert, but great numbers of them have been drowned on the way there by the British submarines and the Royal Air Force in which Australian squadrons played their part.

As I speak this afternoon, an important battle is being fought around Jedabia. We must not attempt to prophesy its result, but I have good confidence. Sir, all this fighting in Libya proves that when our men have equal weapons in their hands and proper support from the air they are more than a match for the Nazi hordes. [Applause] In Libya, as in Russia, events of great importance and of most hopeful import have taken place. But, greatest of all, the mighty Republic of the United States has entered the conflict, and entered it in a manner which shows that for her there can be no withdrawal except [applause] by death or victory.

Et partout dans la France [applause] occupée et inoccupée (car leur sort est égal), ces honnêtes gens, ce grand peuple, la nation française, se redresse. L’espoir se rallume dans les cœurs d’une race guerrière, même désarmée, berceau de la liberté révolutionnaire et ter- rible aux vainqueurs esclaves. Partout, on voit le point du jour, et la lumière grandit, rougeâtre, mais claire. Nous ne perdrons jamais la confiance que la France jouera le rôle des hommes libres et qu’elle reprendra par des voies dures sa place dans la grande compagnie des nations libératrices et victorieuses. [Applause]

Et ici, au Canada, où la langue française est honorée et parlée, nous nous tenons prêts et armés pour aider et pour saluer cette résurrection nationale. [Applause]*

Now, Sir, that the whole of the North American continent is becoming one gigantic arsenal and armed camp, now that the immense reserve power of Russia is gradually becoming manifest, now that the long-suffering, unconquerable China sees help approaching [applause], now that the outraged and subjugated nations can see daylight at the end of the tunnel, it is permissible to take a broad forward view of the war.

*[Translation] And everywhere in France, occupied and unoccupied (for their fate is identical), these honest folk, this great people, the French nation, are rising again. Hope is springing up again in the hearts of a warrior race, even though disarmed, cradle of revolutionary liberty and terrible to slavish conquerors. And everywhere dawn is breaking and light spreading, still reddish, but clear. We shall never lose confidence that France will play the role of free men again and, by hard paths, will once again attain her place in the great company of freedom-bringing and victorious nations.

Here in Canada, where the French language is honoured and spoken, we are armed and ready to help and to hail this national resurrection.

Sir, we may observe three main periods or phases in the struggle that lies before us. First there is the period of consolidation, of combination, and of final preparation. In this period, which will certainly be marked by much heavy fighting, we shall still be gathering our strength, resisting the assaults of the enemy, and acquiring the necessary overwhelming air superiority and shipping tonnage to give our armies the power to traverse, in whatever numbers may be necessary, the seas and oceans which, except in the case of Russia, separate us from our foes. It is only when the vast shipbuilding programme on which the United States has already made so much progress, and which you are powerfully aiding, comes into full flood that we shall be able to bring the whole force of our manhood and of our modern scientific equipment to bear upon the enemy. How long this period will take depends upon the vehemence of the effort put into production in all our war industries and shipyards.

The second phase, Sir, which will then open may be called the phase of liberation. During this phase we must look to the recovery of the territories which have been lost or which may yet be lost, and also we must look to the revolt of the conquered peoples from the moment that the rescuing and liberating armies and air forces appear in strength within their bounds. For this purpose it is imperative that no nation or region overrun, that no Government or State which has been conquered, should relax its moral and physical efforts and preparation for the day of deliverance. The invaders, be they Germans or Japanese, must everywhere be regarded as infected persons to be shunned and isolated as far as possible. Where active resistance is impossible, passive resistance must be maintained.

The invaders and tyrants must be made to feel that their fleeting triumphs will have a terrible reckoning, and that they are hunted men and that their cause is doomed. Particular punishment will be reserved for the quislings and traitors [applause] who make themselves the tools of the enemy. They will be handed over to the judgment of their fellow-countrymen.

Sir, there is a third phase which must also be contemplated, namely, the assault upon the citadels and homelands of the guilty Powers both in Europe and in Asia. Thus I endeavour in a few words to cast some forward light upon the dark, inscrutable mysteries of the future. But in thus forecasting the course along which we should seek to advance, we must never forget that the power of the enemy and the action of the enemy may at every stage affect our fortunes. Moreover, Sir, you will notice that I have not attempted to assign any time-limits to the various phases. These time-limits depend upon our exertions, and upon our achievements, and on the hazardous and uncertain course of the war.

Nevertheless, I feel it is right at this moment to make it clear that, while an ever-increasing bombing offensive against Germany will remain one of the principal methods by which we hope to bring the war to an end, it is by no means the only method which our growing strength now enables us to take into account. Evidently the most strenuous exertions must be made by all. As to the form which these exertions take, that is for each partner in the Grand Alliance to judge for himself in consultation with others and in harmony with the general scheme.

Let us then, Sir, address ourselves to our task, not in any way underrating its tremendous difficulties and perils, but in good heart and sober confidence, resolved that, whatever the cost, whatever the suffering, we shall stand by one another, true and faithful comrades, and do our duty, God helping us, to the end. [Applause]

“TO BE ABLE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN SENTIMENT AND SENTIMENTALITY, AND BETWEEN INVECTIVE AND VULGAR ABUSE, IS NOT THE WHOLE ARMOURY OF THE JOURNALIST—NOR OF CHURCHILL.THERE IS ALSO, FOR EXAMPLE, HUMOUR,WHICH COVERS A MULTITUDE OF FORMS AND OF SINS….SOME- TIMES IT TAKES THE FORM OF A SUDDEN VULGARISM, SUCH AS ‘SOME CHICKEN! SOME NECK!’ IT IS NEVER—AT LEAST IN PUBLIC—BROAD. IT TAKES THE FORM RATHER OF A SUDDEN QUIP THAN THE SUSTAINED JEST.” —Colin Coote, “Churchill the Journalist” in Charles Eade, ed., Churchill by His Contemporaries, 1953