Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (21 page)

Churchill delivered speeches eminently suited for quoting, their memorable phrases ranging from “their finest hour” to “iron curtain.” But no orator can guarantee that his prose will survive the editing of history: this 1940 speech about “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” is now often identified by the altered quotation “blood, sweat, and tears.” (The editing is apt; “toil” and “sweat” are redundant.) Curiously, common usage prefers to begin sequential phrases with “blood”: Otto von Bismarck’s warlike 1862
Eisen und Blut
was also switched around to “blood and iron.”

The German threat, memorably described by Churchill as “a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime,” is the foremost concern of the new prime minister. Addressing the House of Commons, he uses repetition and alliteration (“many, many months of struggle and suffering”) to pound home the period of stress and sacrifice ahead. Through answers to his countrymen’s questions (“You ask, what is our policy?” and “You ask, what is our aim?”), Churchill outlines his intentions for England during the onset of World War II.

***

ON FRIDAY EVENING
last I received from His Majesty the mission to form a new administration.

It was the evident will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties.

I have already completed the most important part of this task. A war cabinet has been formed of five members, representing, with the Labour, Opposition, and Liberals, the unity of the nation.

It was necessary that this should be done in one single day on account of the extreme urgency and rigor of events. Other key positions were filled yesterday. I am submitting a further list to the king tonight. I hope to complete the appointment of principal ministers during tomorrow.

The appointment of other ministers usually takes a little longer. I trust when Parliament meets again this part of my task will be completed and that the administration will be complete in all respects.

I considered it in the public interest to suggest to the Speaker that the House should be summoned today. At the end of today’s proceedings, the adjournment of the House will be proposed until May 21 with provision for earlier meeting if need be. Business for that will be notified to MPs at the earliest opportunity.

I now invite the House by a resolution to record its approval of the steps taken and declare its confidence in the new government. The resolution:

“That this House welcomes the formation of a government representing the united and inflexible resolve of the nation to prosecute the war with Germany to a victorious conclusion.”

To form an administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself. But we are in the preliminary phase of one of the greatest battles in history. We are in action at many other points—in Norway and in Holland—and we have to be prepared in the
Mediterranean. The air battle is continuing, and many preparations have to be made here at home.

In this crisis I think I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today, and I hope that any of my friends and colleagues or former colleagues who are affected by the political reconstruction will make all allowances for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act.

I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.

You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs—victory in spite of all terrors—victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.

Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal.

I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men.

I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, “Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”

The evacuation of 340,000 British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk on the continent of Europe, with 40,000 left behind to be taken prisoner by the Nazi forces, was called by Churchill “a miracle of deliverance,” as if it were a kind of allied victory. But the retreat to the beaches and across the English Channel on May 26 and 27, 1940, was—as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was reported to have said privately afterward—“the greatest military defeat for many centuries.”

He spoke to the House of Commons on June 4, as directional signs were being taken down at crossroads throughout Britain in anticipation of Hitler’s invasion. Three weeks before, he had delivered his speech offering nothing but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” (see p. 143) but showing “buoyancy and hope” and concluding with a ringing “let us go forward together with our united strength.” That was before Allied forces suffered a crushing defeat and the real possibility of the landing of German troops swept the country. Now a longer speech in a more somber mood was required, containing a report more detailed in its military analysis, and with some silver lining seen in the war cloud.

After reviewing the tactical defenses put up by the British, French, and Belgian “armies of the north,” he reported how “the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe” around them. By showing how “the whole root and core and brain of the British Army… seemed about to perish or be led into an ignominious and starving captivity,” he accentuated the worst case possible, which made the successful retreat a “miracle of deliverance” for which Britain should be grateful. His repetition of the biblical word “deliverance” was the cue to the press to refer to “the miracle of Dunkirk.” By emphasizing the scope of the losses that were not suffered, the new prime minister lessened the impact of the defeat that took place.

Churchill was careful not to destroy his credibility by overtly minimizing
the defeat that drove the British from the Continent and would be followed in three weeks by the surrender of France. “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.” Then came his crucial and upbeat
but
: “But there is a victory inside this deliverance… gained by the air force.” Only after paying tribute to the few thousand young airmen who beat back the Luftwaffe in this engagement, and calling their future defense of the realm an unprecedented “opportunity for youth,” did Churchill admit that the past week had been “a colossal military disaster.”

The “We shall not flag or fail” peroration is as inspiring as any written in the twentieth century. He first sounds a note of defiance, “whatever the cost may be,” then uses “we shall fight” seven times, culminating in “we shall never surrender.” As a participant in World War I and as an historian, Churchill was surely familiar with the French leader Georges Clemenceau’s defiant formulation in 1918, translated as “I shall fight in front of Paris, within Paris, behind Paris.” Consciously or not, Churchill echoed that theme and improved on its rhythm in his unforgettable “We shall fight on the beaches… we shall fight in the fields and in the streets… we shall never surrender.” (This may be apocryphal, but in the roar of cheering and applause that followed in the House of Commons, he added in an aside to a colleague, “And we’ll fight them with the butt ends of broken beer bottles, because that’s bloody well all we’ve got!”)

Most orators would have ended on that high never-surrender note. But what makes Churchill’s peroration especially powerful is its double change of pace and mood at the end: first solemnly recognizing the terrible consequences of failure with Britons “subjugated and starving,” then ameliorating this depressing prospect with an expression of confidence that the New World—that is, the United States—supported by surviving British seapower, would “step forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

***

…WHEN A WEEK
ago today I asked the House to fix this afternoon for the occasion of a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce from this box the greatest military disaster of our long history.

I thought, and there were good judges who agreed with me, that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be reembarked, but it certainly seemed that the whole French First Army and the whole British Expeditionary Force, north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up in open field or else have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition.

These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called on the House
and nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British armies in the later years of the war, seemed due to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity….

The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British Army at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea of more than thirty miles’ length which otherwise would have been cut off. In doing this and closing this flank, contact was lost inevitably between the British and two of three corps forming the First French Army, who were then further from the coast than we were. It seemed impossible that large numbers of Allied troops could reach the coast. The enemy attacked on all sides in great strength and fierceness, and their main power, air force, was thrown into the battle…. For four or five days the intense struggle raged. All armored divisions, or what was left of them, together with great masses of German infantry and artillery, hurled themselves on the ever-narrowing and contracting appendix within which the British and French armies fought.

Meanwhile the Royal Navy, with the willing help of countless merchant seamen and a host of volunteers, strained every nerve and every effort and every craft to embark the British and Allied troops. Over 220 light warships and more than 650 other vessels were engaged. They had to approach this difficult coast, often in adverse weather, under almost ceaseless hail of bombs and increasing concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas themselves free from mines and torpedoes.

It was in conditions such as these that our men carried on with little or no rest for days and nights, moving troops across dangerous waters and bringing with them always the men whom they had rescued. The numbers they brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage. Hospital ships, which were plainly marked, were the special target for Nazi bombs, but the men and women aboard them never faltered in their duty.

Meanwhile the Royal Air Force, which had already been intervening in the battle so far as its range would allow it to go from home bases, now used a part of its main metropolitan fighter strength to strike at German bombers…. The struggle was protracted and fierce. Suddenly the scene has cleared, the crash and thunder has momentarily, but only for the moment, died away…. A miracle of deliverance… is manifest to us all. The enemy was hurled back by the retreating British and French troops. He was so roughly handled that he dared not molest their departure seriously. The Royal Air Force decisively defeated the main
strength of the German Air Force and inflicted on them a loss of at least four to one. And the navy, using nearly 1,000 ships of all kinds, carried over 335,000 men, French and British, from the jaws of death back to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately before them.

We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance which must be noted…. Can you conceive of a greater objective for the power of Germany in the air than to make all evacuations from these beaches impossible and to sink all of the ships, numbering almost 1,000? Could there have been an incentive of greater military importance and significance to the whole purpose of the war?

They tried hard and were beaten back. They were frustrated in their task; we have got the armies away…. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The great French Army was very largely… cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it not be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen?

There never has been, I suppose, in all the history of the world such opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table and Crusaders have fallen back into distant days, not only distant but prosaic; but these young men are going forth every morning, going forth holding in their hands an instrument of colossal shattering power, of whom it may be said that “every morn brought forth a noble chance and every chance brought forth a noble deed.” These young men deserve our gratitude, as all brave men who in so many ways and so many occasions are ready and will continue to be ready to give their life and their all to their native land….

Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our army with so many men, and the thankfulness of their loved ones, who passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster….

We are told that Hitler has plans for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, someone told him, “There are bitter weeds in England.” There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned….