 A total and unmitigated defeat. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Speech given by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, 5 October 1938. If I do not begin this afternoon by paying the usual, and indeed almost invariable, to the Prime Minister for his handling of this crisis, it is certainly not from any lack of personal regard. We have always, over a great many years, had very pleasant relations, and I have deeply understood from personal experiences of my own in a similar crisis, the stress and strain he has had to bear. But I am sure it is much better to say exactly what we think about public affairs, and this is certainly not the time when it is worth anyone's while to court political popularity. We had a shining example of firmness of character from the late First Lord of the Admiralty two days ago. He showed that firmness of character, which is utterly unmoved by currents of opinion, however swift and violent they may be. My honorable friend, the member for Southwest Hall, Mr. Law, to whose compulsive speech the House listened on Monday, was quite right in reminding us that the Prime Minister has himself, throughout his conduct of these matters, shown a robust indifference to cheers or booze, and to the alternations of criticism or applause. If that be so, such qualities and elevation of mind should make it possible for the most severe expressions of honest opinion to be interchanged in this House without rupturing personal relations, and for all points of view to receive the fullest possible expression. Being thus fortified myself by the example of others, I will proceed to emulate them. I will therefore begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing. I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget, but which must nevertheless be stated, namely that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat and that France has suffered even more than we have. The utmost, my right honorable friend, the Prime Minister, has been able to secure, by all his immense exertions, by all the great efforts and mobilization which took place in this country, and by all the anguish and strain through which we have passed in this country, the utmost he has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them serve to him, course by course. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, said it was the first time Herr Hitler had been made to retract. I think that was the word in any degree. We really must not waste time after all this long debate upon the difference between the positions reached at Berktischgaden, at Gotisburg, and at Munich. They can be very simply epitomized if the House will permit me to vary the metaphor. One pound was demanded at the pistol's point. When it was given, two pounds were demanded at the pistol's point. Finally the dictator consented to take one pound seventeen shillings and six pence, and the rest in promises of goodwill for the future. Now I come to the point, which was mentioned to me just now from some quarters of the House, about the saving of peace. No one has been a more resolute and uncompromising struggler for peace than the Prime Minister. Everyone knows that. Never has there been such instance and undaunted determination to maintain and secure peace. That is quite true. Nevertheless, I am not quite clear why there was so much danger of Great Britain or France being involved in a war with Germany at this juncture, if in fact they were ready all along to sacrifice Czechoslovakia. The terms which the Prime Minister brought back with him could easily have been agreed, I believe, through the ordinary diplomatic channels at any time during the summer. And I will say this, that I believe the Czechs left to themselves and told they were going to get no help from the Western powers would have been able to make better terms than they have got after all this tremendous perturbation they could hardly have had worse. There never can be any absolute certainty that there will be a fight if one side is determined that it will give way completely. When one reads the Munich terms, when one sees what is happening in Czechoslovakia from hour to hour, when one is sure, I will not say of parliamentary approval, but of parliamentary acquiescence, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes a speech which at any rate tries to put in a very powerful and persuasive manner the fact that after all, it was inevitable and indeed righteous. When we say all this, and everyone on this side of the House, including many members of the Conservative Party who are vigilant and careful guardians of the national interest, it is quite clear that nothing vitally affecting us was at stake. It seems to me that one must ask what was all the trouble and fuss about. The resolve was taken by the British and the French governments. Let me say that it is very important to realize that it is by no means a question which the British government only have had to decide. I very much admire the manner in which, in the House, all references of a recriminatory nature have been repressed. But it must be realized that this resolve did not emanate particularly from one or other of the governments, but was a resolve for which both must share in common the responsibility. When this resolve was taken and the course was followed, you may say it was wise or unwise, prudent or short-sighted, once it had been decided not to make the defence of Czechoslovakia a matter of war, then there was really no reason, if the matter had been handled during the summer in the ordinary way, to call into being all this formidable apparatus of crisis. I think that point should be considered. We are asked to vote for this motion, which has been put upon the paper, and it is certainly a motion couched in very uncontroversial terms, as indeed is the amendment moved from the opposition side. I cannot myself express my agreement with the steps which have been taken, and as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put his side of the case with so much ability, I will attempt, if I may be permitted, to put the case from a different angle. I have always held the view that the maintenance of peace depends upon the accumulation of deterrence against the aggressor, coupled with a sincere effort to redress grievances. Her Hitler's victory, like so many of the famous struggles that have governed the fate of the world, was won upon the narrowest of margins. After the seizure of Austria in March, we face this problem in our debates. I ventured to appeal to the government to go a little farther than the Prime Minister went, and to give a pledge that in conjunction with France and other powers, they would guarantee the security of Czechoslovakia, while the Sudeten Deutsch question was being examined, either by a League of Nations Commission, or some other impartial body. And I still believe that if that course had been followed, events would not have fallen into this disastrous state. I agree very much with my right honourable friend, the member for Sparkbrook, Mr. Amory, when he said on that occasion, do one thing or the other, either say you will disinterest yourself in the matter altogether, or take the step of giving a guarantee which will have the greatest chance of securing protection for that country. France and Great Britain together, especially if they had maintained a close contact with Russia, which certainly was not done, would have been able in those days in the summer when they had the prestige to influence many of the smaller states of Europe. And I believe they could have determined the attitude of Poland. Such a combination, prepared at a time when the German dictator was not deeply and irrevocably committed to his new adventure, would, I believe, have given strength to all those forces in Germany which resisted this departure, this new design. They were varying forces. Those of a military character which declared that Germany was not ready to undertake a world war, and all that mass of moderate opinion and popular opinion which dreaded war, and some elements of which still have some influence upon the government. Such action would have given strength to all that intense desire for peace, which the helpless German masses share with their British and French fellow men, and which, as we have been reminded, found a passionate and rarely permitted vent in the joyous manifestations with which the Prime Minister was acclaimed in Munich. All these forces, added to the other deterrence, which combinations of powers great and small, ready to stand firm upon the front of law, and for the ordered remedy of grievances, would have formed, might well have been effective. Between submission and immediate war, there was this third alternative, which gave a hope not only of peace, but of justice. It is quite true that such a policy in order to succeed demanded that Britain should declare straight out, and a long time beforehand, that she would, with others, join to defend Czechoslovakia against an unprovoked aggression. His Majesty's government refused to give that guarantee when it would have saved the situation. Yet in the end, they gave it when it was too late, and now for the future, they renew it when they have not the slightest power to make it good. All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her association with the Western democracies and with the League of Nations, of which she has always been an obedient servant. She has suffered in particular from her association with France, under whose guidance and policy she has been actuated for so long. The very measures taken by His Majesty's government in the Anglo-French agreement to give her the best chance possible, namely the 50% clean cut in certain districts instead of a plebiscite, have turned to her detriment, because there is to be a plebiscite too in wide areas, and those other powers, who had claims, have also come down upon the helpless victim. Those municipal elections upon whose voting the basis is taken for the 50% cut were held on issues which had nothing to do with joining Germany. When I saw her headline over here, he assured me that that was not the desire of his people. Positive statements were made that it was only a question of home rule, of having a position of their own in the Czechoslovakian state. No one has a right to say that the plebiscite which is to be taken in areas under SAR conditions, and the clean cut of the 50% areas, that those two operations together amount in the slightest degree to a verdict of self-determination. It is a fraud and a farce to invoke that name. We in this country, as in other liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination. But it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian states who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds. But however you put it, this particular block of land, this mass of human beings to be handed over, has never expressed the desire to go into the Nazi rule. I do not believe that even now, if their opinion could be asked, they would exercise such an opinion. What is the remaining position of Czechoslovakia? Not only are they politically mutilated, but economically and financially, they are in complete confusion. Their banking, their railway arrangements are severed and broken. Their industries are curtailed, and the movement of their population is most cruel. The Sudeten miners, who are all Czechs and whose families have lived in that area for centuries, must now flee into an area where there are hardly any minds left for them to work. It is a tragedy which has occurred. There must always be the most profound regret and a sense of vexation in British hearts at the treatment and the misfortune which have overcome the Czechoslovakian Republic. They have not ended here. At any moment there may be a hitch in the program. At any moment there may be an order for Herr Goebbels to start again his propaganda of calamity and lies. At any moment an incident may be provoked. And now that the fortress line is turned away, what is there to stop the will of the conqueror? Obviously we are not in a position to give them the slightest help at the present time, except what everyone is glad to know has been done, the financial aid which the government have promptly produced. I venture to think that in future the Czechoslovak state cannot be maintained as an independent entity. I think you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured only by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi regime. Perhaps they may join it in despair or in revenge. At any rate that story is over and told. But we cannot consider the abandonment and the ruin of Czechoslovakia in the light only of what happened only last month. It is the most grievous consequence of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years, five years of futile good intentions, five years of eager search for the line of least resistance, five years of uninterrupted retreat of British power, five years of neglect of our air defenses. Those are the features which I stand here to expose and which marked an improvident stewardship for which Great Britain and France have dearly to pay. We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never care to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word war was considered one which could be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum. We have been reduced from a position of safety and power, power to do good, power to be generous to a beaten foe, power to make terms with Germany, power to give her proper redress for her grievances, power to stop her arming if we chose, power to take any step in strength or mercy or justice which we thought right, reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now. When I think of the fair hopes of a long peace which still lay before Europe at the beginning of 1933, when Herr Hitler first obtained power and of all the opportunities of arresting the growth of the Nazi power which have been thrown away, when I think of the immense combinations and resources which have been neglected or squandered, I cannot believe that a parallel exists in the whole course of history. So far as this country is concerned, the responsibility must rest with those who have had the undisputed control of our political affairs. They neither prevented Germany from rearming nor did they rearm themselves in time. They quarreled with Italy without saving Ethiopia. They exploited and discredited the vast institution of the League of Nations and they neglected to make alliances and combinations which might have repaired previous errors and thus they left us in the hour of trial without adequate national defence or effective international security. In my holiday I thought it was a chance to study the reign of King Ethelred the Unready. The House will remember that that was a period of great misfortune in which, from the strong position which we had gained under the descendants of King Alfred, we fell very swiftly into chaos. It was the period of Dengeld and of foreign pressure. I must say that the rugged words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written a thousand years ago seem to me opposite. At least as opposite as those quotations from Shakespeare with which we have been regaled by the last speaker from the opposition bench. Here is what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said and I think the words apply very much to our treatment of Germany and our relations with her. All these calamities fell upon us because of evil council, because tribute was not offered to them at the right time nor yet were they resisted, but when they had done the most evil then was peace made with them. That is the wisdom of the past for all wisdom is not new wisdom. I have ventured to express those views in justifying myself for not being able to support the motion which is moved tonight, but I recognize that this great matter of Czechoslovakia and of British and French duty there has passed into history. New developments may come along but we are not here to decide whether any of those steps should be taken or not. They have been taken. They have been taken by those who had a right to take them because they bore the highest executive responsibility under the crown. Whatever we may think of it, we must regard those steps as belonging to the category of affairs which are settled beyond recall. The past is no more and one can only draw comfort if one feels that one has done one's best to advise rightly and wisely and in good time. I therefore turn to the future and to our situation as it is today. Here again I am sure I shall have to say something which will not be at all welcome. We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away and I can see no means by which it can be reconstituted. The road down the Danube valley to the Black Sea, the road which leads as far as Turkey, has been opened. In fact if not informed it seems to me that all those countries of Middle Europe, all those Danubian countries will, one after another, be drawn into this vast system of power politics. Not only power military politics but power economic politics radiating from Berlin and I believe this can be achieved quite smoothly and swiftly and will not necessarily entail the firing of a single shot. If you wish to survey the havoc of the foreign policy of Britain and France look at what is happening and is recorded each day in the columns of the times. Why I read this morning about Yugoslavia and I know something about the details of that country. The effects of the crisis for Yugoslavia can immediately be traced. Since the elections of 1935 which followed soon after the murder of King Alexander, the Serb and Croat opposition to the government of Dr Stojodinović have been conducting their entire campaign for the next elections under the slogan back to France, England and the little entente, back to democracy. The events of the past fortnight have so triumphantly vindicated Dr Stojodinović's policy, his is a policy of close association with Germany, that the opposition has collapsed practically overnight. The new elections, the date of which was in doubt, are now likely to be held very soon and can result only in an overwhelming victory for Dr Stojodinović's government. Here was a country which three months ago would have stood in the line with other countries to arrest what has occurred. Again, what happened in Warsaw? The British and French ambassadors visited the foreign minister, Colonel Beck, or sought to visit him in order to ask for some mitigation in the harsh measures being pursued against Czechoslovakia about Tečin. The door was shut in their faces. The French ambassador was not even granted an audience and the British ambassador was given a most curt reply by a political director. The whole matter is described in the Polish press as a political indiscretion committed by those two powers, and we are today reading of the success of Colonel Beck's blow. I am not forgetting, I must say, that it is less than 20 years since British and French bayonets rescued Poland from the bondage of a century and a half. I think it is indeed a sorry episode in the history of that country for whose freedom and rights so many of us have had warm and long sympathy. Those illustrations are typical. You will see, day after day, week after week, entire alienation of those regions. Many of those countries, in fear of the rise of the Nazi power, have already got politicians, ministers, governments who were pro-German, but there was always an enormous popular movement in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, which looked to the western democracies and loathed the idea of having this arbitrary rule of the totalitarian system thrust upon them, and hoped that a stand would be made. All that has gone by the board. We are talking about countries which are a long way off. But what will be the position, I want to know, of France and England this year and the year afterwards? What will be the position of that western front of which we are in full authority, the guarantors? The German army at the present time is more numerous than that of France, though not nearly so matured or perfected. Next year it will grow much larger and its maturity will be more complete. Relieved from all anxiety in the east and having secured resources which will greatly diminish if not entirely remove the deterrent of a naval blockade, rulers of Nazi Germany will have a free choice open to them as to what direction they will turn their eyes. If the Nazi dictator should choose to look westward, as he may, bitterly will France and England regret the loss of that fine army of ancient Bohemia, which was estimated last week to require not fewer than 30 German divisions for its destruction. Can we blind ourselves to the great change which has taken place in the military situation and to the dangers we have to meet? We are in process, I believe, of adding in four years battalions to the British army. No fewer than two have already been completed. Here are at least 30 divisions which must now be taken into consideration upon the French front, besides the 12 that were captured when Austria was engulfed. Many people no doubt honestly believe that they are only giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, whereas I fear we shall find that we have deeply compromised and perhaps fatally endangered the safety and even the independence of Great Britain and France. This is not merely a question of giving up the German colonies, as I am sure we shall be asked to do, nor is it a question only of losing influence in Europe. It goes far deeper than that. You have to consider the character of the Nazi movement and the rule which it implies. The prime minister desires to see cordial relations between this country and Germany. There is no difficulty at all in having cordial relations between the peoples. Our hearts go out to them, but they have no power. But never will you have friendship with the present German government. You must have diplomatic and correct relations, but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power. That power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That power cannot ever be the trusted friend of the British democracy. What I find unendurable is the sense of our country falling into the power into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure. It is to prevent that that I have tried my best to urge the maintenance of every bulwark of defense. First the timely creation of an air force superior to anything within striking distance of our shores. Secondly the gathering together of the collective strength of many nations and thirdly the making of alliances and military conventions all within the covenant in order to gather together forces at any rate to restrain the onward movement of this power. It has all been in vain. Every position has been successively undermined and abandoned on specious and plausible excuses. We do not want to be led upon the high road to becoming a satellite of the German Nazi system of European domination. In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands with which we shall no doubt be invited to comply. Those demands may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty. I foresee and foretell that the policy of submission will carry with it restrictions upon the freedom of speech and debate in parliament, on public platforms and discussions in the press. For it will be said, indeed I hear it said sometimes now, that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticized by ordinary common English politicians. Then with the press under control, in part direct, but more potently indirect, with every organ of public opinion doped and chloroformed into acquiescence, we shall be conducted along further stages of our journey. It is a small matter to introduce into such a debate as this, but during the week I heard something of the talk of tadpole and taper. They were very keen upon having a general election, a sort of, if I may say so, inverted khaki election. I wish the Prime Minister had heard the speech of my honorable and gallant friend, the member for the Abbey Division of Westminster, Sir Sydney Herbert, last night. I know that no one is more patient and regular in his attendance than the Prime Minister. And it is marvellous how he is able to sit through so much of our debates. But it happened that by bad luck he was not here at that moment. I am sure, however, that if he had heard my honorable and gallant friend's speech he would have felt very much annoyed that such a rumour could even have been circulated. I cannot believe that the Prime Minister, or any Prime Minister, possessed of a large working majority, would be capable of such an act of historic constitutional indecency. I think too highly of him. Of course, if I have misjudged him on the right side, and there is a dissolution on the Munich Agreement, on Anglo-Nazi friendship, of the state of our defences, and so forth, everyone will have to fight according to his convictions, and only a prophet could forecast the ultimate result. But, whatever the result, few things could be more fatal to our remaining chances of survival as a great power than that this country should be torn and twain upon this deadly issue of foreign policy, at a moment when, whoever the ministers may be, united effort can alone make us safe. I have been casting about to see how measures can be taken to protect us from this advance of the Nazi power, and to secure those forms of life which are so dear to us. What is the sole method that is open? The sole method that is open is for us to regain our old island independence by acquiring that supremacy in the air which we were promised, that security in our air defences which we were assured we had, and thus to make ourselves an island once again. That, in all this grim outlook, shines out as the overwhelming fact. An effort at rearmament, the like of which has not been seen, ought to be made forthwith, and all the resources of this country, and all its united strength, should be bent to that task. I was very glad to see that Lord Baldwin yesterday in the House of Lords said that he would mobilize industry tomorrow. But I think it would have been much better if Lord Baldwin had said that two-and-a-half years ago, when everyone demanded a ministry of supply. I will venture to say to honorable gentlemen sitting here behind the government bench, honorable friends of mine, whom I thank for the patience with which they have listened to what I have to say, that they have some responsibility for all this too, because if they had given one tithe of the cheers they have lavished upon this transaction of Czechoslovakia to the small band of members who were endeavoring to get timely rearmament set in motion, we should not now be in the position in which we are. Honorable gentlemen opposite and honorable members on the liberal benches are not entitled to throw these stones. I remember for two years having to face not only the government's depreciation, but their stern disapproval. Lord Baldwin has now given the signal, tardy though it may be, let us at least obey it. After all, there are no secrets now about what happened in the air and in the mobilization of our anti-aircraft defenses. These matters have been, as my honorable and gallant friend the member for the Abbey Division said, seen by thousands of people. They can form their own opinions of the character of the statements which have been persistently made to us by ministers on this subject. Who pretends now that there is air parity with Germany? Who pretends now that our anti-aircraft defenses were adequately manned or armed? We know that the German General's staff are well informed upon these subjects, but the House of Commons has hitherto not taken seriously its duty of requiring to assure itself on these matters. The Home Secretary said the other night that he would welcome investigation. Many things have been done which reflect the greatest credit upon the administration, but the vital matters are what we want to know about. I have asked again and again during these three years for a secret session where these matters could be thrashed out, or for an investigation by a select committee of the House, or for some other method. I ask now that when we meet again in the autumn, that should be a matter on which the government should take the House into its confidence because we have the right to know where we stand and what measures are being taken to secure our position. I do not grudge our loyal, brave people who are ready to do their duty no matter what the cost, who never flinched under the strain of last week. I do not grudge them the natural, spontaneous outburst of joy and relief when they learned that the hard ordeal would no longer be required of them at the moment. But they should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defenses. They should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road. They should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the western democracies. Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting. And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time. End of speech. 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 a 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 scales, 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 not one 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 Yor, 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 defense 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 dearly valued 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. I beg to move 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. On Friday evening last I received His Majesty's commission to form a new administration. It was the evident wish and will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis, and that it should include all parties, both those that supported the late government and also the parties of the opposition. I have completed most important part of this task. A war cabinet has been formed of five members representing, with the opposition liberals, the unity of the nation. The three party leaders have agreed to serve, either in the war cabinet or in high executive office. The three fighting services have been filled. It was necessary that this should be done in one single day on account of the extreme and rigor of events. A number of other key positions were filled yesterday, and I am submitting a further list to His Majesty tonight. I hope to complete the appointment of the principal ministers during tomorrow. The appointment of the other ministers usually takes a little longer, but I trust that 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 that the House should be summoned to meet today. Mr. Speaker agreed and took the necessary steps in accordance with the powers conferred on him by the resolution of the House. At the end of the proceedings today, the adjournment of the House will be proposed until Tuesday, 21 May, with, of course, provision for an earlier meeting if need be. The business to be considered during that week will be notified to members at the earliest opportunity. I now invite the House, by the resolution which stands in my name, to record its approval of the steps taken and to declare its confidence in the new government. To form a new administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are at the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous and that many preparations have to be made here at home. In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues or former colleagues who are affected by the political reconstruction will make all allowance for the lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the 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 long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say it is to wage war by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us. To wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word, victory, victory at all costs victory, in spite of all terror, 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 and impulse of the ages that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, come then, let us go forward together with our united strength. End of speech. We shall fight on the beaches. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Speech given by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons 4 June 1940. From the moment that the French defences at Sedan and on the Moose were broken at the end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the South could have saved the British and French armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King. But this strategic fact was not immediately realized. The French High Command hoped they would be able to close the gap, and the armies of the North were under their orders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian army of over twenty divisions and the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force and scope of the German penetration were realized, and when a new French Generalissimo, General Weigand, assumed command in place of General Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British armies in Belgium to keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own right hand to a newly created French army, which was to have advanced across the Somme in great strength to grasp it. However, the German eruption swept like a sharp sith around the right and rear of the armies of the North. Eight or nine armored divisions, each of about four hundred armored vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut off all communications between us and the main French armies. It severed our own communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to Amiens and afterwards through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the coast to Bologna and Calais and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armored and mechanized onslaught came a number of German divisions and lorries, and behind them again there plotted comparatively slowly the dull, brute mass of the ordinary German army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own. I have said this armored sith stroke almost reached Dunkirk, almost but not quite. Bologna and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The guards defended Bologna for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from this country. The rifle brigade, the sixtieth rifles and the queen Victoria's rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and one thousand Frenchmen in all about four thousand strong, defended Calais to the last. The British brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned the offer and four days of intense street fighting passed before silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable resistance. Only thirty unwounded survivors were brought off by the navy, and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however, was not in vain. At least two armor divisions, which otherwise would have been turned against the British expeditionary force, had to be sent to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories of the light divisions, and the time gained enabled the grave line water lines to be flooded and to be held by the French troops. Thus it was that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible for the armies of the North to reopen their communications to Amiens with the main French armies, only one choice remained. It seemed indeed for Lorne. The Belgian, British, and French armies were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighboring beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air. When a week ago today I asked the house to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history. I thought, and some good judges agreed with me, that perhaps twenty thousand or thirty thousand men might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British expeditionary force north of the Amiens Abaville gap would be broken up in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon the house and the 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 about to perish on the field or to be led into an ignomious and starving capacity. That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final was yet to fall upon us. The king of the Belgians had called upon us to come to his aid. Had not this ruler and his government severed themselves from the allies who rescued their country from extinction in the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality, the French and British armies might well at the outset have saved not only Belgium, but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the last moment, when Belgium was already invaded, King Leopard called upon us to come to his aid, and even at the last moment we came. He and his brave, efficient army, nearly half a million strong, guarded our left flank and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly, without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the advice of his ministers and upon his own personal act, he sent a plenipotentary to the German command, surrendered his army, and exposed our whole flank and means of retreat. I asked the house a week ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were not clear, but I do not feel that any reason now exists why we should not form our own opinions upon this pitiful episode. The surrender of the Belgian army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea more than thirty miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest army his country had ever formed. So in doing this, and in exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the first French army, who were still farther from the coast than we were, and it seemed impossible that any large number of Allied troops could reach the coast. The enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the power of their far more numerous air force, was thrown into the battle or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began to fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas. They sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than a hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single pier that remained, and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk, and their motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armored divisions, or what was left of them, together with great masses of infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and French armies fought. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, with the willing help of countless merchant seamen, strained every nerve to embark the British and Allied troops. Two hundred and twenty light warships and six hundred and fifty other vessels were engaged. They had to operate upon the difficult coast, often in adverse weather, under an almost ceaseless hail of bombs and an increasing concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas, as I have said, 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 on end, making trip after trip across the dangerous waters, bringing with them always men whom they had rescued. The numbers they had brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage. The hospital ships, which brought off many thousands of British and French wounded, being so plainly marked, were a special target for Nazi bombs, but the men and women on board 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, from home bases, now used part of its main metropolitan fighter strength and struck at the German bombers and at the fighters which in large numbers protected them. This struggle was protracted in fierce. Suddenly the scene has cleared, the crash and thunder has, for the moment, but only for the moment died away. A miracle of deliverance achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect discipline, by faultless service, by resource, by skill, by unconquerable fidelity is manifest to us all. The enemy was hurled back by the retreating British and French troops. He was so roughly handled that he did not hurry their departure seriously. The Royal Air Force engaged the main strength of the German Air Force and inflicted upon them losses of at least four to one, and the Navy, using nearly one thousand ships of all kinds, carried over three hundred thirty-five thousand men, French and British, out of the jaws of death and shame, to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately ahead. We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance, which should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force. Many of our soldiers coming back have not seen the Air Force at work. They saw only the bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrated its achievements. I have heard much talk of this. That is why I go out of my way to say this. I will tell you about it. This was a great trial of strength between the British and German Air Forces. Can you conceive a greater objective for the Germans in the air than to make evacuation from these beaches impossible and to sink all these ships which were displayed almost to the extent of thousands? Could there have been an objective of greater military importance and significance for the whole purpose of the war than this? They tried hard and they were beaten back. They were frustrated in their task. We got the army away and they have paid forefold for any losses which they have inflicted. Very large formations of German airplanes, and we know that they are a very brave race, have turned on several occasions from the attack of one-quarter of their number of the Royal Air Force and have dispersed in different directions. Twelve airplanes have been hunted by two. One airplane was driven into the water and cast away by the mere charge of a British airplane which had no more ammunition. All of our types, the hurricane, the spitfire, and the new defiant and all our pilots have been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face. When we consider how much greater would be our advantage in defending the air above this island against an overseas attack, I must say that I find in these facts a sure basis upon which practical and reassuring thoughts may rest. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The great French army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it not also 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 world, in all the history of war such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past, not only distant but prosaic. These young men, going forth every mourn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power, of whom it may be said that every mourn brought forth a noble chance, and every chance brought forth a noble night. Deserve our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are ready and continue ready to give life and all for their native land. I return to the army. In the long series of very fierce battles, now on this front, now on that, fighting on three fronts at once, battles fought by two or three divisions against an equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so well, in these battles our losses in men have exceeded thirty thousand killed, wounded, and missing. I take occasion to express the sympathy of the house to all who have suffered bereavement, or who are still anxious. The President of the Board of Trade, Sir Andrew Duncan, is not here today. His son has been killed, and many in the house have felt the pangs of affliction in the sharpest form. But I will say this about the missing. We have had a large number of wounded come home safely to this country, but I would say about the missing that there may be some very many reported missing who will come back home, some day, in one way or another. In the confusion of this fight it is inevitable that many have been left in positions where honor required no further resistance from them. Against this loss of over thirty thousand men, we can set a far heavier loss certainly inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We have perhaps lost one third of the men we lost in the opening days of the battle of 21st March, 1918, but we have lost nearly as many guns, nearly one thousand, and all our transport, all the armored vehicles that were with the army in the north. This loss will impose a further delay on the expansion of our military strength. That expansion had not been proceeding as far as we had hoped. The best of all we had to give had gone to the British Expeditionary Force, and although they had not the numbers of tanks and some articles of equipment which were desirable, they were a very well and finely equipped army. They had the first fruits of all that our industry had to give, and that is gone. And now, here is this further delay. How long will it be? How long it will be? How long it will last depends upon the exertions which we make in this island. An effort the like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made. Work is proceeding everywhere, night and day, Sundays and weekdays. Capital and labor have cast aside their interests, rights and customs, and put them into the common stock. Already the flow of munitions has leapt forward. There is no reason why we should not, in a few months, overtake the sudden and serious loss that has come upon us, without retarding the development of our general program. Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our army and so many men, whose loved ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster. The French army has been weakened. The Belgian army has been lost. A large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had been reposed is gone. Many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy's possession. The whole of the Channel ports are now in his hands, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that. And we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France. We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Bologne for a year with his flat bottom boats and his grand army, he was told by someone, there are bitter weeds in England. There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned. The whole question of home defense against invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this island incomparably more powerful military forces than we have ever had at any moment in this war or the last. But this will not continue. We shall not be content with the defensive war. We have our duty to our ally. We have to reconstitute and build up the British Expeditionary Force once again under its gallant commander-in-chief, Lord Gort. All this is in train, but in the interval we must put our defenses in this island into such a high state of organization that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give effective security and that the largest possible potential of offensive effort may be realized. On this we are now engaged. It will be very convenient, if it be the desire of the House, to enter upon this subject in secret session. Not that the government would necessarily be able to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we like to have our discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they will be read the next day by the enemy, and the government would benefit by views freely expressed in all parts of the House by members with their knowledge of so many different parts of the country. I understand that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily acceded to by His Majesty's government. We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are great many people affected by the orders which we have made who are the passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot at the present time and under the present stress draw all the distinctions which we should like to do. If parachute landings were attempted and fierce fighting attended upon them followed, these unfortunate people would be far better out of the way for their own sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class for which I feel not the slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us the powers to put down fifth column activities with a strong hand, and we shall use these powers subject to the supervision and correction of the House without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied and more than satisfied that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out. Turning once again and this time more generally to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In the days of Napoleon the same wind which would have carried his transports across the channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching but at the same time I hope with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of a sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised. I have myself full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary, for years, if necessary, alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty's Government, every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the Nation. The British Empire and the French Republic link together in their cause and in their need will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old. Spoke the other day of the colossal military disaster which occurred when the French High Command failed to withdraw the northern armies from Belgium at the moment when they knew that the French front was decisively broken at Sedan and on the Meurs. This delay entailed the loss of fifteen or sixteen French divisions and threw out of action for the critical period the whole of the British Expeditionary Force. Our army and a hundred and twenty thousand French troops were indeed rescued by the British Navy from Duncook, but only with the loss of their cannon, vehicles, and modern equipment. This loss inevitably took some weeks to repair and in the first two of those weeks the battle in France has been lost. When we consider the heroic resistance made by the French army against heavy odds in this battle, the enormous losses inflicted upon the enemy, and the evident exhaustion of the enemy, it may well be thought that these twenty-five divisions of the best trained and best equipped troops might have turned the scale. However, General Weigong had to fight without them. Only three British divisions, or their equivalent, were able to stand in the line with their French comrades. They had suffered severely, but they had fought well. We sent every man we could to France as fast as we could re-equip and transport their formations. I am not reciting these facts for the purpose of recrimination. That I judged to be utterly futile and even harmful. We cannot afford it. I recite them in order to explain why it was we did not have, as we could have had, between twelve and fourteen British divisions fighting in the line in this great battle, instead of only three. Now I put all this aside. I put it on the shelf, from which the historians, when they have time, will select their documents to tell their stories. We have to think of the future and not of the past. This also applies in a small way to our own affairs at home. There are many who would hold an inquest in the House of Commons on the conduct of the governments, and of parliaments, for there in it too, during the years which led up to this catastrophe. They seek to indict those who were responsible for the guidance of our affairs. This also would be a foolish and pernicious process. There are too many in it. Let each man search his conscience and search his speeches. I frequently search mine. Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. Therefore I cannot accept the drawing of any distinctions between members of the present government. It was formed at a moment of crisis in order to unite all the parties and all sections of opinion. It has received the almost unanimous support of both houses of parliament. Its members are going to stand together, and subject to the authority of the House of Commons, we are going to govern the country, and fight the war. It is absolutely necessary at a time like this, that every minister who tries each day to do his duty shall be respected, and their subordinates must know that their chiefs are not threatened men, men who are here to-day and gone to-morrow, but that their directions must be punctually and faithfully obeyed. Without this concentrated power we cannot face what lies before us. I should not think it would be very advantageous for the House to prolong this debate this afternoon under conditions of public stress. Many facts are not clear that will be clear in a short time. We are to have a secret session on Thursday, and I should think that would be a better opportunity for the many earnest expressions of opinion which members will desire to make, and for the House to discuss vital matters without having everything read the next morning by our dangerous foes. The disastrous military events which have happened during the past fortnight have not come to me with any sense of surprise. Indeed, I indicated a fortnight ago as clearly as I could to the House that the worst possibilities were open, and I made it perfectly clear then that whatever happened in France would make no difference to the resolve of Britain and the British Empire to fight on, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. During the last few days we have successfully brought off the great majority of the troops we had on the lines of communication in France, and seven-eighths of the troops we have sent to France since the beginning of the war, that is to say about three-hundred and fifty thousand out of four hundred thousand men, are safely back in this country. Others are still fighting with the French, and fighting with considerable success in their local encounters against the enemy. We have also brought back a great mass of stores, rifles, and munitions of all kinds which had been accumulated in France during the last nine months. We have therefore in this island today a very large and powerful military force. This force comprises all our best-trained and our finest troops, including scores of thousands of those who have already measured their quality against the Germans and found themselves at no disadvantage. We have under arms at the present time in this island over a million and a quarter men. Behind these we have the local defence volunteers numbering half a million, only a portion of whom, however, are yet armed with rifles or other firearms. We have incorporated into our defence forces every man for whom we have a weapon. We expect very large additions to our weapons in the near future, and in preparation for this we intend forthwith to call up drill and train further large numbers. Those who are not called up, or else are employed upon the vast business of munitions production in all its branches, and their ramifications are innumerable, will serve their country best by remaining at their ordinary work until they receive their summons. We have also overhear Dominion's armies. The Canadians had actually landed in France, but have now been safely withdrawn, much disappointed, but in perfect order with all their artillery and equipment. And these very high-class forces from the Dominions will now take part in the defence of the mother country. Lest the account which I have given of these large forces should raise the question, why did they not take part in the great battle in France? I must make it clear that, apart from the division's training and organising at home, only twelve divisions were equipped to fight upon a scale which justified their being sent abroad. And this was fully up to the number which the French had been led to expect would be available in France at the ninth month of the war. The rest of our forces at home have a fighting value for home defence, which will, of course, steadily increase every week that passes. Thus the invasion of Great Britain would at this time require the transportation across the sea of hostile armies on a very large scale, and after they had been so transported they would have to be continually maintained with all the masses of munitions and supplies which are required for continuous battle, as continuous battle it will surely be. Here is where we come to the navy, and after all we have a navy. Some people seem to forget that we have a navy. We must remind them. For the last thirty years I have been concerned in discussions about the possibilities of overseas invasion, and I took the responsibility on behalf of the Admiralty at the beginning of the last war of allowing all regular troops to be sent out of the country. That was a very serious step to take, because our territorial had only just been called up and were quite untrained. Therefore this island was for several months practically denuded of fighting troops. The Admiralty had confidence at that time in their ability to prevent a mass invasion even though at that time the Germans had a magnificent battle fleet in the proportion of ten to sixteen, even though they were capable of fighting a general engagement every day and any day, whereas now they have only a couple of heavy ships worth speaking of, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. We are also told that the Italian naviers to come out and gain sea superiority in these waters. If they seriously intend it, I shall only say that we shall be delighted to offer Signor Mussolini a free and safeguarded passage through the Straits of Gibraltar in order that he may play the parts to which he aspires. There is a general curiosity in the British fleet to find out whether the Italians are up to the level they were at in the last war or whether they have fallen off at all. Therefore it seems to me that as far as sea-born invasion on a great scale is concerned we are far more capable of meeting it today than we were at many periods in the last war and during the early months of this war before our other troops were trained and while the BEF had proceeded abroad. Now the navy have never pretended to be able to prevent raids by bodies of five thousand or ten thousand men flung suddenly across and thrown ashore at several points on the coast from dark night or foggy morning. The efficacy of sea power, especially under modern conditions, depends upon the invading force being of large size. It has to be of large size in view of our military strength to be of any use. If it is of large size then the navy have something they can find and meet and, as it were, bite on. Now we must remember that even five divisions, however lightly equipped, would require 200 to 250 ships and with modern air reconnaissance and photography it would not be easy to collect such an armada, marshal it and conduct it across the sea without any powerful naval forces to escort it and there would be very great possibilities to put it mildly that this armada would be intercepted long before it reached the coast and all the men drowned in the sea or, at the worst, blown to pieces with their equipment while they were trying to land. We also have a great system of minefields recently strongly reinforced through which we alone know the channels. If the enemy tries to sweep passages through these minefields it will be the task of the navy to destroy the mine sweepers and any other forces employed to protect them. There should be no difficulty in this owing to our great superiority at sea. Those are the regular well tested well proved arguments on which we have relied during many years in peace and war. But the question is whether there are any new methods by which those solid assurances can be circumvented. Odd as it may seem some attention has been given to this by the Admiralty whose prime duty and responsibility it is to destroy any large seaborne expedition before it reaches or at the moment when it reaches these shores. It would not be a good thing for me to go into details of this. It might suggest ideas to other people which they have not thought of and they would not be likely to give us any of their ideas in exchange. All I will say is that untiring vigilance and mind searching must be devoted to the subject, because the enemy is crafty and cunning and full of novel treacheries and stratagems. The house may be assured that the utmost ingenuity is being displayed and imagination is being evoked from large numbers of competent officers well trained in tactics and thoroughly up to date to measure and counterwork novel possibilities. Untiring vigilance and untiring searching of the mind is being and must be devoted to the subject, because remember the enemy is crafty and there is no dirty trick he will not do. Some people will ask why then was it that the British navy was not able to prevent the movement of a large army from Germany into Norway across the Skagarak. But the conditions in the Channel and in the North Sea are in no way like those which prevail in the Skagarak. In the Skagarak, because of the distance, we could give no air support to our surface ships, and consequently lying as we did close to the enemy's main air power, we were compelled to use only our submarines. We could not enforce the decisive blockade or interruption which is possible from surface vessels. Our submarines took a heavy toll, but could not by themselves prevent the invasion of Norway. In the Channel and in the North Sea on the other hand, our superior naval surface forces aided by our submarines will operate with close and effective air assistance. This brings me naturally to the great question of invasion from the air, and of the impending struggle between the British and German air forces. It seems quite clear that no invasion on a scale beyond the capacity of our land forces to crush speedily is likely to take place from the air until our air force has been definitely overpowered. In the meantime there may be raids by parachute troops and attempted dissents of airborne soldiers. We should be able to give those Gentry a warm reception both in the air and on the ground if they reach it in any condition to continue the dispute. But the great question is, can we break Hitler's air weapon? Now of course it is a very great pity that we have not got an air force at least equal to that of the most powerful enemy within striking distance of these shores. But we have a very powerful air force which has proved itself far superior in quality both in men and in many types of machine to what we have met so far in the numerous and fierce air battles which have been fought with the Germans. In France, where we were at a considerable disadvantage and lost many machines on the ground when they were standing around the aerodromes, we were accustomed to inflict in the air losses of as much as two to two-and-a-half to one. In the fighting over Dunkirk, which was a sort of no man's land, we undoubtedly beat the German air force and gained the mastery of the local air inflicting here a loss of three or four to one day after day. Anyone who looked at the photographs which were published a week or so ago of the re-embarkation, showing the masses of troops assembled on the beach and forming an ideal target for hours at a time, must realize that this re-embarkation would not have been possible unless the enemy had resigned all hope of recovering air superiority at that time and at that place. In the defence of this island, the advantages to the defenders will be much greater than they were in the fighting around Dunkirk. We hope to improve on the rate of three or four to one, which was realized at Dunkirk, and in addition all our injured machines and their crews which get down safe, and surprisingly a very great many injured machines and men do get down safely in modern air fighting, all of these will fall in an attack upon these islands on friendly soil and live to fight another day, whereas all the injured enemy machines and their compliments will be total losses as far as the war is concerned. During the great battle in France we gave very powerful and continuous aid to the French army, both by fighters and bombers, but in spite of every kind of pressure we never would allow the entire metropolitan fighter strength of the air force to be consumed. This decision was painful, but it was also right, because the fortunes of the battle in France could not have been decisively affected even if we had thrown in our entire fighter force. That battle was lost by the unfortunate strategic opening, by the extraordinary and unforeseen power of the armoured columns, and by the great preponderance of the German army in numbers. Our fighter air force might easily have been exhausted as a mere accident in that great struggle, and then we should have found ourselves at the present time in a very serious plight. But as it is, I am happy to inform the house that our fighter strength is stronger at the present time relatively to the Germans, who have suffered terrible losses, than it has ever been, and consequently we believe ourselves possessed of the capacity to continue the war in the air under better conditions than we have ever experienced before. I look forward confidently to the exploits of our fighter pilots, these splendid men, this brilliant youth, who will have the glory of saving their native land, their island home, and all they love, from the most deadly of all attacks. There remains, of course, the danger of bombing attacks, which will certainly be made very soon upon us by the bomber forces of the enemy. It is true that the German bomber force is superior in numbers to ours, but we have a very large bomber force also, which we shall use to strike at military targets in Germany without intermission. I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal which lies before us, but I believe our countrymen will show themselves capable of standing up to it, like the brave men of Barcelona, and will be able to stand up to it and carry on in spite of it at least as well as any other people in the world. Much will depend upon this. Every man and every woman will have the chance to show the finest qualities of their race, and render the highest service to their cause. For all of us at this time, whatever our sphere, our station, our occupation, or our duties, it will be a help to remember the famous lines, he nothing common did or mean upon that memorable scene. I have thought it right upon this occasion to give the house and the country some indication of the solid, practical grounds upon which we base our inflexible resolve to continue the war. There are a good many people who say, never mind, win or lose, sink or swim, better die than submit to tyranny, and such a tyranny. And I do not disassociate myself from them, but I can assure them that our professional advisors of the three services unitedly advise that we should carry on the war, and that there are good and reasonable hopes of final victory. We have fully informed and consulted all the self-governing dominions, these great communities far beyond the oceans, who have been built upon our laws and our civilization, and who are absolutely free to choose their course, but are absolutely devoted to the ancient motherland, and who feel themselves inspired by the same emotions which lead me to stake our all upon duty and honour. We have fully consulted them, and I have received from their prime ministers Mr Mackenzie King of Canada, Mr Menzies of Australia, Mr Fraser of New Zealand, and General Smuts of South Africa, that wonderful man with his immense, profound mind and his eye watching from a distance the whole panorama of European affairs. I have received from all these eminent men, who all have governments behind them elected on wide franchises, who are all there because they represent the will of their people, messages couched in the most moving terms, in which they endorse our decision to fight on, and declare themselves ready to share our fortunes and to persevere to the end. That is what we are going to do. We may now ask ourselves, in what way has our position worsened since the beginning of the war? It has worsened by the fact that the Germans have conquered a large part of the coastline of Western Europe, and many small countries have been overrun by them. This aggravates the possibilities of air attack, and adds to our naval preoccupations. It in no way diminishes, but on the contrary definitely increases the power of our long-distance blockade. Similarly the entrance of Italy into the war increases the power of our long-distance blockade. We have stopped the worst leak by that. We do not know whether military resistance will come to an end in France or not, but should it do so, then of course the Germans will be able to concentrate their forces, both military and industrial, upon us. But for the reasons I have given to the house, these will not be found so easy to apply. If invasion has become more imminent, as no doubt it has, we, being relieved from the task of maintaining a large army in France, have far larger and more efficient forces to meet it. If Hitler can bring under his despotic control the industries of the countries he has conquered, this will add greatly to his already vast armament output. On the other hand this will not happen immediately, and we are now assured of immense continuous and increasing support in supplies and munitions of all kinds from the United States, and especially of aeroplanes and pilots from the Dominions and across the oceans, coming from regions which are beyond the reach of enemy bombers. I do not see how any of these factors can operate to our detriment on balance before the winter comes, and the winter will impose a strain upon the Nazi regime, with almost all Europe rising and starving under its cruel heel, which, for all their ruthlessness, will run them very hard. We must not forget that from the moment when we declared war on the 3rd of September, it was always possible for Germany to turn all her air force upon this country, together with any other devices of invasion she might conceive, and that France could have done little or nothing to prevent her doing so. We have therefore lived under this danger in principle and in a slightly modified form during all these months. In the meanwhile, however, we have enormously improved our methods of defence, and we have learned what we had no right to assume at the beginning, namely that the individual aircraft and the individual British pilot have a sure and definite superiority. Therefore, in casting up this dread balance sheet, and contemplating our dangers with a disillusioned eye, I see great reason for intense vigilance and exertion, but none whatever for panic or despair. During the first four years of the last war, the Allies experienced nothing but disaster and disappointment. That was our constant fear, one blow after another, terrible losses, frightful dangers, everything miscarried. And yet at the end of those four years, the morale of the Allies was higher than that of the Germans, who had moved from one aggressive triumph to another, and who stood everywhere triumphant invaders of the lands into which they had broken. During that war we repeatedly asked ourselves the question, how are we going to win? And no one was able ever to answer it with much precision, until at the end, quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, our terrible foe collapsed before us, and we were so glutted with victory that in our folly, we threw it away. We do not yet know what will happen in France, or whether the French resistance will be prolonged, both in France and in the French Empire overseas. The French government will be throwing away great opportunities and casting adrift their future if they do not continue the war in accordance with their treaty obligations, from which we have not felt able to release them. The House will have read the historic declaration, in which at the desire of many Frenchmen, and of our own hearts, we have proclaimed our willingness, at the darkest hour in French history, to conclude a union of common citizenship in this struggle. However matters may go in France, or with the French government, or other French governments, we in this island, and in the British Empire, will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people. If we are now called upon to endure what they have been suffering, we shall emulate their courage, and if final victory rewards our toils, they shall share the gains, I, and freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands, not one jot or tittle that we recede. Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians have joined their causes to our own. All these shall be restored. What General Vagon called the Battle of France is over, and I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. 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, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, this was their finest hour. End of speech.