Winston Churchill, A 60 Year Old Speech That Changed The World.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

Winston Churchill is a man whose insights I quite admire (& who, for some reason, is reviled by many of the EuroDopers on the Board).
60 years ago today, he came to America, bearing a warning. I’m glad we listened.

Here is the text of his speech.

Biography of Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the UK

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone - Greece with its immortal glories - is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.

I thank the United Kingdom for producing such a man. We are in your debt.

[trupa]

I Join **Bosda ** in offering my thanks.

Winston Churchil was a facinating man, as well as a great leader and statesman (although a so-so First lord of the Admiralty in WW1, but hey, nobody’s perfect…)

And the young Churchill makes Indiana Jones seem positively milquetoast by comparison.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

I’ve got his 6-volume History Of The Second World War on my shelf.

I wonder if there is an unedited version, in a bankvault somewhere, waiting for a little more time to pass.

[Robot_Arm]

Good stuff, but what the hell was Winston Churchill doing in Fulton, Missouri?

[Shirley_Ujest]

A great man still today.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

@Robot Arm

Good stuff, but what the hell was Winston Churchill doing in Fulton, Missouri?

Addressing a University.

THIS may shed some light on the matter.

[David_Simmons]

Churchill was what was needed after the fall of France. A great man in many fields such as writing, speaking. However, he was discarded as Prime Minister almost before the ink was dry on the German surrender document. His comeback as Prime Minister wasn’t all that successful. His continued harping on opening a WWII front in the Balkans to strike at the “soft underbelly” of Europe under the Nazis was a non-starter. There was never any easily attacked “soft underbelly.”

[Kythereia]

@Winston Churchill

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or many 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…

A good and great man.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

On a side note, my thanks to Agonist for debunking the “never give up” glurge. Winston Churchill was one of the most eloquent speakers and writers in the history of the English language, and the idea that he would consider a banal cliche repeated three or four times to be an adequate substitute for a speech has always stuck in my craw.

[Boulter_s_Canary]

@Freddy the Pig

On a side note, my thanks to Agonist for debunking the “never give up” glurge. Winston Churchill was one of the most eloquent speakers and writers in the history of the English language, and the idea that he would consider a banal cliche repeated three or four times to be an adequate substitute for a speech has always stuck in my craw.

In any case, Churchill had his own version: - KBO (Keep buggering on) - and would have used that if anything.

[Bippy_the_Beardless]

The speach from http://www.school-for-champions.com/speeches/churchill_never_give_in.htm which was linked to in the other thread.

@Winston Churchill

Introduction

Almost a year has passed since I came down here at your Head Master’s kind invitation in order to cheer myself and cheer the hearts of a few of my friends by singing some of our own songs.
Body of speech

The ten months that have passed have seen very terrible catastrophic events in the world–ups and downs, misfortunes-- but can anyone sitting here this afternoon, this October afternoon, not feel deeply thankful for what has happened in the time that has passed and for the very great improvement in the position of our country and of our home?

Why, when I was here last time we were quite alone, desperately alone, and we had been so for five or six months. We were poorly armed. We are not so poorly armed today; but then we were very poorly armed. We had the unmeasured menace of the enemy and their air attack still beating upon us, and you yourselves had had experience of this attack; and I expect you are beginning to feel impatient that there has been this long lull with nothing particular turning up!

But we must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months - if it takes years - they do it.

Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing our minds back to our meeting here ten months ago and now, is that appearances are often very deceptive, and as Kipling well says, we must “…meet with Triumph and Disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same.”

You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination.
Closing remarks

But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period–I am addressing myself to the School–surely from this period of ten months, this is the lesson:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.

Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.

You sang here a verse of a School Song: you sang that extra verse written in my honor, which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there is one word in it I want to alter - I wanted to do so last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: “Not less we praise in darker days.”

I have obtained the Head Master’s permission to alter darker to sterner. “Not less we praise in sterner days.”

Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days–the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.

[Marlitharn]

@Robot Arm

Good stuff, but what the hell was Winston Churchill doing in Fulton, Missouri?

Laying the groundwork for a 60 year long tourism blitz by the local Chamber of Commerce.

We’ve also had then-V.P. George Bush (I’ll never forget the sight of him driving by in his limo with his nose literally pressed against the glass, grinning like a fool and waving maniacally), Gorbachev, and Margaret Thatcher. I believe we invited Ronald Reagan the year the local street fair was dedicated to all things King’s Row, but he was busy running the country and couldn’t make it.