Winston Churchill :: essays research papers

Those eleven burning words summed up the nature of Britains war, turned Britains back on the weaknesses of the past, set her vitrine toward the unknown future. Because of them the rest of that speech has been forgotten. It should not be forgotten, for it is not only a great example of Winston Churchills eloquence, but the epitome of the movement which he leads. by and by a brief report on the formation of his Government, Winston Churchill said "You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea and air--war with all our superpower and with all the strength God has given us--and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of homosexual crime. That is our policy. "You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however tenacious and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. "Let that be realized. No su rvival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal." December 31, 1940, was not only the end of a year it was the end of a decade--the most terrifying of the 20th Century. The decade which ended in 1920 had seen a war that was to prove inconclusive. It had seen a revolution that was to lie quiescent after establishing itself in the largest country of the world. The decade which ended in 1930 was one of confusion and wasted energy--the wasted energy of gambling and gin-drinking in the U.S., of civil war in the cold East, of misdirected revolutionary effort from the U.S.S.R., of the attempt in Europe to hold resurgent peoples in check. The decade which ended this week saw the failure of that attempt and the unleashing of remorseless war. It saw the Far Easts battle of warlords turn into a war for the supremacy of one people. It saw the U.S. tu rn to a feverish effort to protect itself and its neighbors. It saw, in the Battle of Britain, the life-&-death struggle of the greatest empire the world has ever known. The Candidates of 1940. No artist, no athlete, no scientist, only a man whose place was on the stage of world politics, could be Man of 1940--last and stormiest year of a stormy decade.