Their finest hour
Jan. 24 marked the 50th death anniversary of Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill. Described as the “last lion” by historian William Manchester, Churchill is Britain’s most influential statesman. His bulldog tenacity enabled him to take his country from the brink of defeat to the heights of victory in World War II.
In the course of human conflict, few speeches have electrified and inspired an entire nation more than a series of talks delivered by Sir Winston Churchill during a period of dark despair and desolation, when all appeared to be lost for the United Kingdom. German hordes were threatening to take over most of the continent, and the British Empire was beginning to buckle under the pressure of Adolf Hitler’s powerful war machine.
“The French resistance had collapsed. The Dutch had been overwhelmed. The Belgians had surrendered. The British Army, trapped (originally sent to help, was forced to retreat—RJF), fought free and fell back… converging on a fishing town whose name was then spelled Dunkerque” (“The Last Lion,” William Manchester). All that was left were 220,000 troops and they had lost most of their equipment. It appeared that Hitler was the master of Europe and even the British believed that a negotiated peace pact was the only alternative available to them. At this critical point, Churchill was then chosen to replace Neville Chamberlain as
prime minister.
On May 19, 1940, Churchill spoke for the first time from his ministerial seat: “I speak to you for the first time as prime minister, at a solemn hour in the life of our country, of our empire, of our allies and above all, of the cause of freedom. A tremendous battle is raging in France and Flanders. The Germans have broken through the French defenses north of the Maginot Line and strong columns of their armored vehicles are ravaging the open country, which for the first day or two was without defenders. They have penetrated deeply and spread alarm in their track.
“Behind them are now appearing infantry in lorries, and behind them, again, the large masses are moving forward” (“Winston Churchill, A Life,” John Keegan).
Then Churchill’s mood changed as he sounded a call for national unity:
“We have differed and quarrelled in the past; but now one bond unites us all—to wage war until victory is won and never to surrender ourselves to servitude and shame, whatever the cost of agony may be.”
Finally there was a promise: “Conquer we must; conquer we shall.”
“The evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from the beaches of Dunkirk was just reaching its end; the soldiers had re-crossed the Channel with little more than their rifles, leaving behind all the heavier equipment needed to meet an invasion by the German Armed Forces. There were no replacements, no reserves, no fortifications. Britain faced defeat and the rational judgment was to make peace on
any condition.”
Churchill rejected capitulation in any form. Instead of entering into negotiations with Hitler, on June 4, he made the most celebrated speech of his life:
“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.”
It was the magnificently defiant “never” of the line “We shall never surrender” that electrified the people and enabled Churchill to impose his will and imagination upon his countrymen.
A few days later, on June 19, he made another speech addressing the House of Commons: “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, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age…. 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 still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”
Ironically, after victory was achieved in 1945 and Germany was defeated, the British people voted him out of office, opting for Clement Attlee of the Labour Party as their new leader. During his years in the opposition, Churchill sounded the alarm over Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, raising the specter of an Iron Curtain that would eventually result in the Cold War between former allies.
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On Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, a young revolutionary leader named Martin Luther King delivered his own fervent speech and spoke passionately on the segregation and social injustices long suffered by the American Negro slave. Some of the more memorable excerpts from this speech are reflected in the Selma march, which took place two years later:
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
“I have a dream today!”
Jan. 19 marked the 50th anniversary of the Selma march. King was accompanied by voting rights activists James Bevel, Hosea Williams, and John Lewis along with thousands of nonviolent demonstrators on the 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery. King told the assembled crowd: “There
never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes.”
