Winston
Churchill's
Many people think
that the best way to escape war is to dwell upon its horrors and to imprint
them vividly upon the minds of the younger generation. They flaunt the grisly
photograph before their eyes. They fill their ears with tales of carnage. They
dilate upon the ineptitude of generals and admirals. They denounce the crime as
insensate folly of human strife. Now, all this teaching ought to be very useful
in preventing us from attacking or invading any other country, if anyone
outside a madhouse wished to do so, but how would it help us if we were
attacked or invaded ourselves that is the question we have to ask.
Would the
invaders consent to hear Lord Beaverbrook's exposition, or listen to the
impassioned appeals of Mr. Lloyd George? Would they agree to meet that famous
South African, General Smuts, and have their inferiority complex removed in
friendly, reasonable debate? I doubt it. I have borne responsibility for the
safety of this country in grievous times. I gravely doubt it.
But even if they
did, I am not so sure we should convince them, and persuade them to go back
quietly home. They might say, it seems to me, "you are rich; we are poor.
You seem well fed; we are hungry. You have been victorious; we have been
defeated. You have valuable colonies; we have none. You have your navy; where
is ours? You have had the past; let us have the future." Above all, I fear
they would say, "you are weak and we are
strong."
After all, my friends, only a few hours
away by air there dwell a nation of nearly seventy millions of the most
educated, industrious, scientific, disciplined people in the world, who are
being taught from childhood to think of war as a glorious exercise and death in
battle as the noblest fate for man.
There is a nation
which has abandoned all its liberties in order to augment its collective
strength. There is a nation which, with all its strength and virtue, is in the
grip of a group of ruthless men, preaching a gospel of intolerance and racial
pride, unrestrained by law, by parliament, or by public opinion. In that
country all pacifist speeches, all morbid war books are forbidden or
suppressed, and their authors rigorously imprisoned. From their new table of
commandments they have omitted "thou shall not kill."
It is but twenty
years since these neighbours of ours fought almost the whole world, and almost
defeated them. Now they are rearming with the utmost speed, and ready to their
hands is the new lamentable weapon of the air, against which our navy is -no
defence, and before which women and children, the weak and frail, the pacifist
and the jingo, the warrior and the civilian, the front line trenches and the
cottage home, all lie in equal and impartial peril.
Nay, worse still,
for with the new weapon has come a new method, or rather has come back the most
British method of ancient barbarism, namely, the possibility of compelling the
submission of nations by terrorizing their civil population; and, worst of all,
the more civilized the country is, the larger and more splendid its cities, the
more intricate the structure of its civil and economic life, the more is it
vulnerable and at the mercy of those who may make it their prey.
Now, these are
facts, hard, grim, indisputable facts, and in the face of these facts, I ask
again, what are we to do?
ENG 10-2: Speeches from
the Second World War
Winston Churchill's Speech
Mr. Steel
1. Who
was Winston Churchill? Who was his audience for this speech?
2. What
is Churchill's view on avoiding war? How do most of the population and
politicians in
3. What
is Churchill's criticism of his opponents in the first paragraph who try to
persuade the British people against going to war?
4. In
the second paragraph, does Churchill think that Hitler's
5. In
the third paragraph, what reasons does he think that Hitler would give for
attacking
6. How
does Churchill portray
7. What
does Hitler see as the most "barbaric" of Hitler's methods?
8. What
is Churchill trying to persuade the English people to do?
9.
Examine Churchill's speech using the following chart:
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Tone |
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Emphasis |
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Repetition |
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Imagery |
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ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION IN 3
PARAGRAPHS:
10. Martin Luther King's speech argued for non-violent resistance in order to change society. Malcolm X's speech argued for violent revolution. Chamberlain's war speech argued for avoiding war at all costs. Churchill's speech, by contrast, argues for joining the fight. When is violence an appropriate response to injustice? How, for instance, could violence be wrong in one situation, but correct in another?