I would say to this House

‘I would say to this House, as I said to those who have joined this 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 catalogue of human crime. This 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.’

‘I have never accepted what many people have kindly said – namely, that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless and it proved unconquerable. It fell to me to express it, and if I found the right word you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen and my tongue. It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.’

‘I am perhaps the only man who has passed through both the two supreme cataclysms of recorded history in high executive office… These thirty years of action and advocacy comprise and express my life-effort, and I am content to be judged upon them.’

This is your victory!

‘God bless you all! This is your victory! … Everyone, man or woman, has done their best. Neither the long years, nor the dangers, nor the fierce attacks of the enemy, have in any way weakened the independent resolve of the British nation. God bless you all.’

‘But we have won all our wars. In this most terrible war of all, we not only saved ourselves but kept the flag of freedom flying in the world alone for more than a year. We gave all we had to the common cause. We gave it freely: we coveted no territory; we had no racial hatreds to gratify; we had no vengeance to slake. We were always, being a peaceful nation, backward in preparation. But we always won. In all the long wars I have seen in my life we have always won; and in the last of them our glory and our virtue have been admired by friend and foe.’

‘The gratitude of every home in our island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’

‘Ask what you please, look where you will, you cannot get to the bottom of the resources of Britain. No demand is too novel or too sudden to be met. No need is too unexpected to be supplied. No strain is too prolonged for the patience of our people.

1965 / THIS IS TRANSDIFFUSION