WWII_Ch1_webquest-causes-Churchill-warning

=**Winston Churchill **= =**The threat of Nazi Germany, November 16, 1934 **=

This isn't the whole speech of Churchill, but the excerpt below picks up where Churchill begins to give warning:

...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 neighbors 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 defense, 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?

There are those who say, "Let us ignore the continent of Europe. Let us leave it with its hatreds and its armaments, to stew in its own juice, to fight out its own quarrels, and decree its own doom. Let us turn our backs to this melancholy and alarmist view. Let us fix our gaze across the ocean and see our own life in our own dominions and empires."

There would be very much to this plan if only we could unfasten the British islands from their rock foundations, and could tow them three thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean, and anchor them safely upon the smiling coasts of Canada; but I have not yet heard of any way in which this could be done.

At present we lie within a few minutes' striking distance of the French, Dutch, and Belgian coasts, and within a few hours of the great aerodromes of Central Europe. We are even within cannon shot of the continent-so close as that. Is it prudent, is it possible, however we might desire it, to turn our backs upon Europe and ignore whatever may happen there? Everyone can judge this question for himself, and everyone ought to make up his mind or her mind, let me say, about it without delay. It lies at the heart of our problems.

For my part, I have come to the conclusion, reluctantly I admit, that we cannot get away. Here we are and we must make the best of it, but do not, I beg you, underrate the risks, the grievous risks we have to run. I hope, I pray, and, on the whole, grasping the larger hope, I believe, that no war will fall upon us; but if in the near future the great war of 1914 is resumed again in Europe, no one can tell where and how it would end or whether sooner or later we should not be dragged into it, dragged into it as the United States was dragged in against their will in 1917. Whatever happens, and whatever we did, it would be a time of frightful danger for us, and, when the war was over, or perhaps while it still raged, we should be brought face to face with the victors, whoever they might be. Indeed, with our wealth and vast possessions, we should be the only prize sufficient to reward their exert-ion and compensate them for their losses.

Then certainly those who had tried to forget Europe would have to turn round very quickly indeed and then it would-be too late. Therefore, it seems to me that we cannot detach ourselves from Europe and that for our own safety and self-preservation we are bound to make exertions and run risks for the sake of keeping peace.

There are some who say, indeed it has been the shrill cry of the hour, that we should run the risk of disarming ourselves in order to set an example to others. We have done that already. We have done it for the last five years, but our example has not been followed. On the contrary, it has produced, as I ventured to predict, the opposite results. All the other countries have armed only the more heavily, and the quarrels and intrigues about disarmament have only bred more ill will between the nations.

Everyone would be glad to see the burden of armaments reduced in every country, but history shows on many a page that armaments are not necessarily a cause of war and that the want of them has been no guarantee of peace. If, for instance, all the explosives all over the world could, by a wave of a magic wand be robbed of their power and made harmless, so that not a cannon nor a rifle could fire and not a shell or a bomb detonate, that would be a measure of world disarmament far beyond the brightest dreams of Geneva, but would it insure peace? That is the question. On the contrary, in my belief, war would begin almost the next day when enormous masses of fierce men armed with picks, spades, or with clubs and spears, would pour over the frontiers into the lands they covet.

This truth may be unfashionable, unpalatable, no doubt unpopular, but, if it is the truth, the story of mankind shows that war was universal and unceasing for millions of years before armaments were invented or armies organized. Indeed, the lucid intervals of peace and order only occurred in human history after armaments in the hands of strong governments have come into being, and civilization in every age has been nursed only in cradles guarded by superior weapons and superior discipline.

To remove the causes of war, we must go deeper than armaments. We must remove grievances and injustice. We must raise human thought to a higher plane. We must give a new inspiration to the world. Let moral disarmament come and physical disarmament will soon follow.

That is but one side of this. Is there another? When we look out upon the state of Europe and of the world and of the position of our own country as they are tonight, it seems to me that the next year or two years may contain a faithful turning point in our history. I am afraid that if you look intently at what is moving towards Great Britain, you will see that the only choice open is the old grim choice our forebears had to face, namely, whether we shall submit or whether we shall prepare, whether we shall submit to the will of the stronger nation or whether we shall prepare to defend our rights, our liberties, and indeed, our lives.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If we submit, our submission should be timely. If we prepare, our preparation should not be too late. Submission will entail at the very least, the passing and distribution of the British Empire, and the acceptance by our people within and under a Teutonic domination of Europe of whatever future may be in store for small countries like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The difficulty about submission-I state it calmly-the difficulty is that we have already in this island the population of a first class power, and on our new scale of life as a small state, we could not feed more than perhaps half of those who live here now. Great stresses will arise in deciding which half shall survive.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You have perhaps read the story of the wrath of Medusa. I will not dwell on that repulsive theme. These are the disadvantages of the submission and of Great Britain definitely releasing her position in the world.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Preparation involves statesmanship, expense, and exertion, and neither submission nor preparation are free from suffering and danger.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I should not speak to you, my friends, fellow countrymen, in this way, if I were not prepared to declare to you some of the measures of preparation by which I believe another great war may be averted and our destruction be prevented should war come. First, we must without another day's delay begin to make ourselves at least the strongest air power in the European world. By this means we shall recover to a very large extent the safety which we formerly enjoyed through our navy, and through our being an island. By this means we shall free ourselves from the dangers of being blackmailed against our will, either to surrender our possessions or even hand over such means of defense as we still possess, or of being forced to join in a continental war against our wish or against our feeling of right and justice.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By this means we shall remove from Europe that additional danger to peace which arises when a very wealthy nation and empire is so obviously undefended that it lies an inviting bait or prey to the ambition or appetite of hungry powers.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But that is not all we should do. I look to the League of Nations as being an instrument which, properly sustained and guided, may preserve the threatened peace of the world. I know it is fashionable in some quarters-in many quarters -to mock at the League of Nations, but where is there any other equal hope?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The many countries, great and small, that are afraid of being absorbed or invaded by Germany, should lay their fears and their facts before the League of Nations. If the League of Nations is satisfied that these fears are justified, it should call upon its members to volunteer as special constables for the preservation of peace against a particular danger. Naturally, those would be most ready to volunteer whose homes lay nearest the regions where the outbreak was most likely to occur. It might well be that not only two or three nations but eight or ten would be found willing in their own interests and in the interests of peace to undertake this special obligation. There would then come into being within the League of Nations and under the formal Authority, a special service band of nations who are in danger, and who want to be let alone. It would be a confederation not merely of the peace-loving powers for everyone will say they are that but of the peace-interested powers, a league of those who have most to lose by war and are nearest to the danger.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I accept the words which General Smuts used only on Monday last. "There should be," he said, "a smaller group within the league, entering into mutual defensive arrangements under the aegis and subject to the control of the league."

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Those are words of wisdom and it seems to me that Great Britain should not refuse to bear her share and do her part in this.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">These volunteer special constables should not only be authorized, but urged by the League of Nations to concert with one another measures of mutual defense against the invasion of any one of them, whether by land, sea, or air; to undertake to maintain forces while the danger lasts.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You have heard the old doctrine of the balance of power. I don't accept it. Anything like a balance of power in Europe will lead to war. Great wars usually come only when both sides think they have good hopes of victory. Peace must -be founded upon preponderance. There is safety in numbers. If there were five or six on each side, there might well be, a frightful trial of strength, but if there were eight or ten on one side and only one or two upon the other, and if the collective armed forces of one side were three or four times as large as those of the other, then there would be no war.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The practical arrangements which are appropriate to one region of the world may be repeated elsewhere in different combinations for other dangers and in other fields, and it might well be that gradually the whole world would be laced with international insurances against individual aggressors, and confidence and safety would return to mankind.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If the first stage of such a structure could be built up by the League of Nations at the present time-and there may still be time-it would, I believe, enable us to get through the next ten years without a horrible and fatal catastrophe, and in that interval, in that blessed breathing space, we might be able to reconstruct the life of Europe and reunite in justice and good will our sundered and quaking civilization. May God protect us all.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Back to the web quest main page