The "This was their finest hour" speech was delivered by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on 18 June 1940 (full text here: http://tinyurl.com/2cu6gzx).
Even today it makes stirring reading and reminds us of the debt owed to the past and how that debt obliges us to act for the future.
Part of the speech follows:
What General Weygand called the "Battle of France" is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands; but if we fail then the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
No comments:
Post a Comment