Catiline the Conspirator Turns and Fights
"Those who are most afraid are always in most danger; but courage is equivalent to a rampart."
Catiline is a name synonymous with conspiracy. The Roman politician and general plotted, schemed, and maneuvered to take power from consul Cicero, who—using facts gained from Catiline's mistress—defamed him before the Senate (the first of Cicero's famous orations against Catiline is on p. 257). Catiline took those of his followers who escaped execution and raced for Gaul, but was cornered at Pistoria, more than two hundred miles north of Rome. He had the choice of fighting and dying or surrendering and dying. In January of 62 B.C., he spoke to his band of sure losers in a way that informed his doomed conspiracy with a nobility in the face of defeat. He was killed in the battle that followed.
The words are those of historian Sallust, who reconstructed the speech from what Catiline was reported to have said, much as a later historian did with Patrick Henry's oration. The opening paragraph, pure flattery, is quite untrue, but offers the sort of compliment an audience facing death likes to receive; the observation, near the close, that necessity "makes even cowards brave" is painfully true.
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I AM WELL aware, soldiers, that words cannot inspire courage and that a spiritless army cannot be rendered active, or a timid army valiant, by the speech of its commander. Whatever courage is in the heart of a man, whether from nature or from habit, so much will be shown by him in the field; and on him whom neither glory nor danger can move, exhortation is bestowed in vain, for the terror in his breast stops his ears.
I have called you together, however, to give you a few instructions, and to explain to you, at the same time, my reasons for the course which I have adopted. You all know, soldiers, how severe a penalty the inactivity and cowardice of Lentulus has brought upon himself and us; and how, while waiting for reinforcements from the city, I was unable to march into Gaul. In what situation our affairs now are, you all understand as well as myself. Two armies of the enemy, one on the side of Rome, and the other on that of Gaul, oppose our progress; while the want of corn, and of other necessaries, prevents us from remaining, however strongly we may desire to remain, in our present position. Whithersoever we would go, we must open a passage with our swords.
I conjure you, therefore, to maintain a brave and resolute spirit and to remember, when you advance to battle, that on your own right hands depend riches, honor, and glory, with the enjoyment of your liberty and of your country. If we conquer, all will be safe; we shall have provisions in abundance, and the colonies and corporate towns will open their gates to us. But if we lose the victory through want of courage, those same places will turn against us, for neither place nor friend will protect him whom his arms have not protected. Besides, soldiers, the same exigency does not press upon our adversaries as presses upon us; we fight for our country, for our liberty, for our life; they contend for what but little concerns them, the power of a small party. Attack them, therefore, with so much the greater confidence, and call to mind your achievements of old.
We might, with the utmost ignominy, have passed the rest of our days in exile. Some of you, after losing your property, might have waited at Rome for assistance from others. But because such a life, to men of spirit, was disgusting and unendurable, you resolved upon your present course. If you wish to quit it, you must exert all your resolution, for none but conquerors have exchanged war for peace. To hope for safety in flight, when you have turned away from the enemy the arms by which the body is defended, is indeed madness. In battle, those who are most afraid are always in most danger; but courage is equivalent to a rampart.
When I contemplate you, soldiers, and when I consider your past exploits, a strong hope of victory animates me. Your spirit, your age, your valor, give me confidence—to say nothing of necessity, which makes even cowards brave. To prevent the numbers of the enemy from surrounding us, our confined situation is sufficient. But should fortune be unjust to your valor, take care not to lose your lives unavenged; take care not to be taken and butchered like cattle, rather than fighting like men, to leave to your enemies a bloody and mournful victory.
Pope Urban II Launches the First Crusade
"Dieu li volt—God wills it!"
Elected Pope in 1088, Urban waited three years until the antipope was ejected before entering Rome. Europe was a maelstrom of warring feudal barons, lawless nobles, and Norman buccaneers. The new pope came up with the way to channel their energies into what he thought would be both diverting and constructive: the recovery of the Holy Land, which was then in the hands of unbelievers. He proposed to start a war—a holy war, or crusade—to tame the threatening Turks on their home ground, to open the Eastern Mediterranean to Italian commerce, and to make possible the adventurous penitentiary pilgrimages that would recruit new adherents to the Church.
At Clermont in November 1095, to an audience of thousands who had pitched their tents in open fields, the French pope stood on a platform to deliver what historian Will Durant called "the most influential speech in medieval history." He summoned Christendom to a crusade, sanctified by God, against the common enemy. He promised them that their families and property would be protected while they were on the crusade, and if they died for God's glory, all their sins would be remitted and Heaven would await their souls. "God wills it!" he shouted in Latin, and the crowd roared back, "God wills it!"
What was willed by Urban II turned out to be a slaughter. After the first wave of twenty thousand disorganized rabble failed, the nobles took over and defeated the Turks at Antioch, driving across Asia Minor to lay siege to Jerusalem, demanding unconditional surrender. After forty days, the small Muslim force gave in. An eyewitness priest, Raymond of Agiles, wrote delightedly, "Wonderful things were to be seen. Numbers of the Saracens were beheaded… or forced to jump from the towers; others were tortured for several days and then burned… one rode about everywhere amid the corpses of men and horses." All seventy thousand Muslim residents of Jerusalem were butchered; Jews were herded into their synagogue and burned alive.
The first of the nine crusades that would turn Asia Minor into a field of blood and death over two centuries had begun. The national monarchies of Europe were unified and strengthened, the ports of Italy prospered, the native Christians were oppressed by the European rulers, and the seeds of religious hatred were firmly planted.
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O RACE OF Franks! race beloved and chosen by God!…
From the confines of Jerusalem and from Constantinople a grievous report has gone forth that an accursed race, wholly alienated from God, has violently invaded the lands of these Christians, and has depopulated them by pillage and fire. They have led away a part of the captives into their own country, and a part they have killed by cruel tortures. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanliness. The kingdom of the Greeks is now dismembered by them, and has been deprived of territory so vast in extent that it could not be traversed in two months' time.
On whom, then, rests the labor of avenging these wrongs, and of recovering this territory, if not upon you—you upon whom, above all others, God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great bravery, and strength to humble the heads of those who resist you? Let the deeds of your ancestors encourage you—the glory and grandeur of Charlemagne and your other monarchs. Let the Holy Sepulcher of Our Lord and Saviour, now held by unclean nations, arouse you, and the holy places that are now stained with pollution…. Let none of your possessions keep you back, nor anxiety for your family affairs. For this land which you now inhabit, shut in on all sides by the sea and the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; it scarcely furnishes food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another, that you wage wars, and that many among you perish in civil strife.
Let hatred, therefore, depart from among you; let your quarrels end. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from a wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. Jerusalem is a land fruitful above all others, a paradise of delights. That royal city, situated at the center of the earth, implores you to come to her aid. Undertake this journey eagerly for the remission of your sins, and be assured of the reward of imperishable glory in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Dieu li volt—"God wills it!"
Queen Elizabeth Inveighs against the Spanish Armada
"I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king…."
Vain, miserly, and fickle, the spinster queen commanded the affection of her subjects by virtue of her courage and her identification with the nation's fate. One of her many rejected suitors, Philip II of Spain, in 1588 assembled what was called the "Invincible Armada" of tall ships to invade England, thereby to assert Catholic power against the center of Protestantism. Elizabeth I, despite the danger of a cross-Channel invasion, went with a small army to visit the troops in Tilbury. Her ostentatious unconcern for personal security while in the midst of the English people was expressed in a strong "Let tyrants fear"; as her soldiers knelt, she affirmed her faith in a "famous victory."
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MY LOVING PEOPLE, we have been persuaded by some, that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear; I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects. And therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down, for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood, even the dust. I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realms: to which, rather than any dishonor should grow by me, I myself will take up arms; I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, by your forwardness, that you have deserved rewards and crowns; and we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble and worthy subject; not doubting by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and by your valor in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over the enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.
Patrick Henry Ignites the American Revolution
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"
On March 23, 1775—the same day that Edmund Burke was urging conciliation with America in London's House of Commons—a thirty-eight-year-old self-taught lawyer named Patrick Henry rose in St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, where 122 of the colony's delegates were meeting. The church's windows were open on the fine spring day to let a crowd gather outside listen to the deliberations of the British colony's representatives. Henry handed a series of resolutions to the clerk, who read them out, concluding, "Resolved therefore, That this Colony be immediately put into a posture of defence; and that [blank] be a Committee to prepare a plan for the embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men as may be sufficient for that purpose." As the proposer, Henry would have been the first called upon to speak for his resolutions, although the initial lines of his reported speech refer graciously to colleagues who differed with him; perhaps he alluded to what they had said the day before.
He spoke without notes; at least, none have ever been found. His speech began in a quiet smolder and ended ablaze with passion. A Baptist clergyman present wrote of the orator's crescendo, "The tendons of his neck stood out white and rigid, like whipcords. His voice rose louder and louder, until the walls of the building and all within them seemed to shake and rock in its tremendous vibrations. Finally his pale face and glaring eyes became terrible to look upon. Men leaned forward in their seats with the heads strained forward, their faces pale and their eyes glaring like the speaker's…. When he sat down, I felt sick with excitement." No applause; no known reply; Richard Henry Lee seconded the resolutions; Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Nelson were reported to have spoken in favor. The vote was called for and taken; the resolutions carried by a narrow margin of five, and the American Revolution in the largest colony was under way.
With "This is no time for ceremony," the speaker goes right to the heart of the matter: "freedom or slavery." His rhetorical approach is one of loaded question and scathing reply. Q.: "Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation?" A.: "These are the implements of war and subjugation…." Q.: "Shall we try argument?" A.: "Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years."
The past pleas to the crown are listed in an active parallel construction: "We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated…." The answers are recounted in parallel also, but in the passive, leaving George III out of it: "Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded…."
When Henry says, "An appeal to arms and the God of Hosts is all that is left us," on top of his earlier refusal to commit "an act of disloyalty towards the majesty of heaven," he is directly referring to a euphemism put forward a century before: English philosopher John Locke, in advancing the courageous idea that man had natural, God-given rights, was presuming to say that these superseded the divine right of kings, but—to save his life—couched his justification for revolution to unseat an unjust monarch in the phrase "an appeal to heaven." This idea under-girded the philosophy Jefferson expressed later in the Declaration of Independence, and the religious image was used by the fiery Henry in calling for what he never named: revolution.
He then knocks down the arguments used against the revolutionaries. "They tell us, sir, that we are weak…." He answers that time is not on the colonists' side, that the king will grow stronger, but that "the battle… is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." The men gathered in the church could fairly hear echoes of Ecclesiastes 9:11: "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong…." And then he adds the crusher: there is no real choice when the alternatives are fighting for liberty or submission to slavery. "The war is inevitable," he concludes, but not in despair, "—and let it come!"
In the peroration, he flays his audience with rhetorical questions, three short and then one long, setting up his answer choosing death rather than slavery. Note the breath, or beat, provided by "I know not what course others may take"; it enables the orator to deliver the punch line with such added force that it echoes down through history.
One small question: Is this what Patrick Henry really said? We know he spoke that day; we know he made a powerful impact with his speech; but we do not know if the speech that has come down to us is the speech he gave. No notes; no manuscript then or later; no contemporaneous account. The first publication of the speech, in 1816, came forty-one years after the Richmond convention, taken from William Wirt's then forthcoming biography of Patrick Henry, who died in 1799. Evidence that the final line was accurate comes from the slogan on the flag of the militia that subsequently served under him: "Liberty or Death." (One rebel wag noted he preferred a less severe "Liberty or Be Crippled.")
In a doctoral dissertation on the authenticity of the Wirt transcript, Stephen T. Olsen—using traditional methods of historical research as well as computer analysis of texts—argues that sometime between 1805 and 1815 biographer Wirt elicited a reconstituted transcript from a friend, federal judge St. George Tucker, who claimed to have been a spectator in the church when Henry delivered his speech. Other scholarship may refute this one day, but until then, my own judgment is that Patrick Henry made a rousing speech that day that did conclude with the line about liberty or death; that a generation later, to respond to the wishes of his friend writing a biography of the patriot, Judge Tucker recalled what he could and made up the rest. If that is so, Judge Tucker belongs among the ranks of history's best ghostwriters. Here is the Henry/Tucker/Wirt transcript in full:
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MR. PRESIDENT:
No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope that it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty towards the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth—to know the worst and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss.
Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with these warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation—the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motives for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging.
And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.
If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak—unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace! Peace!"—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
An Indian Chief Pledges Help
"Only point out to me where your enemies keep…."
This brief pledge of assistance was delivered to the Massachusetts congress by an American Indian, in 1775, as hostilities began in the colonies. The Columbian Orator, published in 1810, did not identify the speaker other than as a member of the Stockbridge tribe. Note the dignity of the simple, declarative prose; the early indication of the value to armies of what came to be known as unconventional warfare; and the ominous innocence at the end.
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BROTHERS!
You remember, when you first came over the great waters, I was great and you were little—very small. I then took you in for a friend, and kept you under my arms, so that no one might injure you. Since that time we have ever been true friends: there has never been any quarrel between us. But now our conditions are changed. You are become great and tall. You reach to the clouds. You are seen all round the world. I am become small—very little. I am not so high as your knee. Now you take care of me; and I look to you for protection.
Brothers! I am sorry to hear of this great quarrel between you and old England. It appears that blood must soon be shed to end this quarrel. We never till this day understood the foundation of this quarrel between you and the country you came from. Brothers! Whenever I see your blood running, you will soon find me about you to revenge my brothers' blood. Although I am low and very small, I will grip hold of your enemy's heel, that he cannot run so fast, and so light, as if he had nothing at his heels.
Brothers! You know I am not so wise as you are; therefore I ask your advice in what I am now going to say. I have been thinking, before you come to action, to take a run to the westward and feel the mind of my Indian brethren, the Six Nations, and know how they stand—whether they are on your side or for your enemies. If I find they are against you, I will try to turn their minds. I think they will listen to me, for they have always looked this way for advice, concerning all important news that comes from the rising sun. If they hearken to me, you will not be afraid of any danger from behind you. However their minds are affected, you shall soon know by me. Now I think I can do you more service in this way than by marching off immediately to Boston and staying there. It may be a great while before blood runs. Now, as I said, you are wiser than I; I leave this for your consideration, whether I come down immediately or wait till I hear some blood is spilled.
Brothers! I would not have you think by this that we are falling back from our engagements. We are ready to do anything for your relief, and shall be guided by your counsel.
Brothers! One thing I ask of you, if you send for me to fight: that you will let me fight in my own Indian way. I am not used to fight English fashion; therefore you must not expect I can train like your men. Only point out to me where your enemies keep, and that is all I shall want to know.
General Washington Talks His Officers Out of Insurrection
"Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country."
The most dangerous moment in the life of the young American republic came on March 15, 1783, when officers of the revolutionary army gathered in Newburgh, New York, to discuss insurrection against what was considered to be perfidious congressional rule. Word had come from Philadelphia to the officers that the United States government was broke and that the army would not be paid. Alexander Hamilton sent warning from New York City to General Washington that, if the war continued, the army would soon have to live off the land, and that army officers might not be recompensed for all owed them when peace came. A cabal of officers behind General Horatio Gates, Washington's deputy, was intent on seeking justice—that is, putting military pressure on the state capitals to pay up. That would surely have been seen as insurrection by the states, with bloodshed to follow; the issue was civilian versus military control of the new government. If the army could hold up the legislatures, no matter how just its cause, the nature of the Republic would be irrevocably changed.
In a vaulted hall called the Temple, used as a church and dancing academy, General Washington unexpectedly showed up at the meeting. He faced a gathering of officers who felt he did not represent their interests; these leaders were angry, resentful, and not happy to see him. His speech was not well received—until the end, when he used a device of reading a letter, and captured his audience with an emotional and impromptu remark.
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GENTLEMEN: BY AN anonymous summons, an attempt has been made to convene you together; how inconsistent with the rules of propriety, how unmilitary, and how subversive of all order and discipline, let the good sense of the army decide….
Thus much, gentlemen, I have thought it incumbent on me to observe to you, to show upon what principles I opposed the irregular and hasty meeting which was proposed to have been held on Tuesday last: and not because I wanted a disposition to give you every opportunity consistent with your own honor, and the dignity of the army, to make known your grievances. If my conduct heretofore has not evinced to you that I have been a faithful friend to the army, my declaration of it at this time would be equally unavailing and improper. But as I was among the first who embarked in the cause of our common country. As I have never left your side one moment, but when called from you on public duty. As I have been the constant companion and witness of your distresses, and not among the last to feel and acknowledge your merits. As I have ever considered my own military reputation as inseparably connected with that of the army. As my heart has ever expanded with joy, when I have heard its praises, and my indignation has arisen, when the mouth of detraction has been opened against it, it can scarcely be supposed, at this late stage of the war, that I am indifferent to its interests.
But how are they to be promoted? The way is plain, says the anonymous addresser. If war continues, remove into the unsettled country, there establish yourselves, and leave an ungrateful country to defend itself. But who are they to defend? Our wives, our children, our farms, and other property which we leave behind us. Or, in this state of hostile separation, are we to take the two first (the latter cannot be removed) to perish in a wilderness, with hunger, cold, and nakedness? If peace takes place, never sheathe your swords, says he, until you have obtained full and ample justice; this dreadful alternative, of either deserting our country in the extremest hour of her distress or turning our arms against it (which is the apparent object, unless Congress can be compelled into instant compliance), has something so shocking in it that humanity revolts at the idea. My God! What can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures? Can he be a friend to the army? Can he be a friend to this country? Rather, is he not an insidious foe? Some emissary, perhaps, from New York, plotting the ruin of both, by sowing the seeds of discord and separation between the civil and military powers of the continent? And what a compliment does he pay to our understandings when he recommends measures in either alternative, impracticable in their nature?…
I cannot, in justice to my own belief, and what I have great reason to conceive is the intention of Congress, conclude this address, without giving it as my decided opinion, that that honorable body entertain exalted sentiments of the services of the army; and, from a full conviction of its merits and sufferings, will do it complete justice. That their endeavors to discover and establish funds for this purpose have been unwearied, and will not cease till they have succeeded, I have not a doubt. But, like all other large bodies, where there is a variety of different interests to reconcile, their deliberations are slow. Why, then, should we distrust them? And, in consequence of that distrust, adopt measures which may cast a shade over that glory which has been so justly acquired; and tarnish the reputation of an army which is celebrated through all Europe, for its fortitude and patriotism? And for what is this done? To bring the object we seek nearer? No! most certainly, in my opinion, it will cast it at a greater distance.
For myself (and I take no merit in giving the assurance, being induced to it from principles of gratitude, veracity, and justice), a grateful sense of the confidence you have ever placed in me, a recollection of the cheerful assistance and prompt obedience I have experienced from you, under every vicissitude of fortune, and the sincere affection I feel for an army I have so long had the honor to command will oblige me to declare, in this public and solemn manner, that, in the attainment of complete justice for all your toils and dangers, and in the gratification of every wish, so far as may be done consistently with the great duty I owe my country and those powers we are bound to respect, you may freely command my services to the utmost of my abilities.
While I give you these assurances, and pledge myself in the most unequivocal manner to exert whatever ability I am possessed of in your favor, let me entreat you, gentlemen, on your part, not to take any measures which, viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained; let me request you to rely on the plighted faith of your country, and place a full confidence in the purity of the intentions of Congress; that, previous to your dissolution as an army, they will cause all your accounts to be fairly liquidated, as directed in their resolutions, which were published to you two days ago, and that they will adopt the most effectual measures in their power to render ample justice to you, for your faithful and meritorious services. And let me conjure you, in the name of our common country, as you value your own sacred honor, as you respect the rights of humanity, and as you regard the military and national character of America, to express your utmost horror and detestation of the man who wishes, under any specious pretenses, to overturn the liberties of our country, and who wickedly attempts to open the floodgates of civil discord and deluge our rising empire in blood.
By thus determining and thus acting, you will pursue the plain and direct road to the attainment of your wishes. You will defeat the insidious designs of our enemies, who are compelled to resort from open force to secret artifice. You will give one more distinguished proof of unexampled patriotism and patient virtue, rising superior to the pressure of the most complicated sufferings. And you will, by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, "Had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining."
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At the conclusion of his speech, which he read from pages of his own clear writing, Washington looked at his sullen audience and drew a letter from his pocket. It was from a member of Congress, he said, explaining the straits the country was in and what that body was attempting to do to pay the debts of the war. He squinted at the writing in the letter and could not go on. The audience of officers stirred in their seats, wondering what was wrong with their commander. Washington then groped in his waistcoat pocket and drew out an item that only his intimates, and very few in that audience, had seen him use. They were stunned to see him required to put on a pair of glasses to read the crabbed writing.
"Gentlemen," he apologized, "you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country."
Biographer James Thomas Flexner writes, "This simple statement achieved what all Washington's rhetoric and all his arguments had been unable to achieve. The officers were instantly in tears, and, from behind the shining drops, their eyes looked with love at the commander who had led them all so far and long. Washington quietly finished reading the congressman's letter. He knew the battle was won, and avoiding, with his instinctive sense of the dramatic, any anticlimax, he walked out of the hall…."
Did he plan to use his infirmity to wring their hearts that way? Was his remark, so felicitously and poignantly phrased, totally spontaneous? We'll never know, but the officers then voted to ask Washington to forward their request to Congress, the granting of which would "prevent any further machinations of designing men."
Richard Price, an English Cleric, Hails the Revolutions
"Tremble, all ye oppressors of the world!"
Richard Price, a nonconformist English clergyman, wrote pamphlets on ethical, political, and economic subjects, inveighed against the oppression of American colonists, and supported the tide of revolution that swept across the end of the eighteenth century. His radical sermon "On the Love of Our Country" was preached to a Protestant Dissenters' society on November 4, 1789; supporting political upheaval in France, it seemed to associate the nonconformist split from the Church of England a century earlier (the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89) with the ideals of the French Revolution, and was the "red rag" that drew the parliamentarian Edmund Burke—who saw anarchy and atheism on the march in Europe—into the conservative forefront.
The peroration beginning with the exclamatory "What an eventful period is this!" is a classic because it rivets the audience by addressing discrete, contrasting groups. The penultimate paragraph is addressed directly to the "friends of freedom" and begins with the imperative "Be encouraged"; the final paragraph is addressed to the "oppressors" and directs them to "tremble." In this way, the orator divides the world into good and bad, right and wrong, and thrusts upon his listeners his unmistakable stand.
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WE ARE MET to thank God for that event in this country to which the name of the Revolution has been given; and which, for more than a century, it has been usual for the friends of freedom, and more especially Protestant Dissenters, under the title of the Revolution Society, to celebrate with expressions of joy and exultation. My highly valued and excellent friend who addressed you on this occasion last year has given you an interesting account of the principal circumstances that attended this event, and of the reasons we have for rejoicing in it. By a bloodless victory, the fetters which despotism had been long preparing for us were broken; the rights of the people were asserted, a tyrant expelled, and a sovereign of our own choice appointed in his room. Security was given to our property, and our consciences were emancipated. The bounds of free inquiry were enlarged; the volume in which are the words of eternal life was laid more open to our examination; and that era of light and liberty was introduced among us by which we have been made an example to other kingdoms and became the instructors of the world. Had it not been for this deliverance, the probability is that, instead of being thus distinguished, we should now have been a base people, groaning under the infamy and misery of popery and slavery. Let us, therefore, offer thanksgivings to God, the author of all our blessings.
…We have particular reason, as Protestant Dissenters, to rejoice on this occasion. It was at this time we were rescued from persecution, and obtained the liberty of worshiping God in the manner we think most acceptable to him. It was then our meetinghouses were opened, our worship was taken under the protection of the law, and the principles of toleration gained a triumph. We have, therefore, on this occasion, peculiar reasons for thanksgiving. But let us remember that we ought not to satisfy ourselves with thanksgivings. Our gratitude, if genuine, will be accompanied with endeavors to give stability to the deliverance our country has obtained, and to extend and improve the happiness with which the Revolution has blessed us. Let us, in particular, take care not to forget the principles of the Revolution. This society has, very properly, in its reports, held out these principles, as an instruction to the public. I will only take notice of the three following:
First: the right to liberty of conscience in religious matters.
Secondly: the right to resist power when abused. And,
Thirdly: the right to choose our own governors; to cashier them for misconduct; and to frame a government for ourselves.
On these three principles, and more especially the last, was the Revolution founded. Were it not true that liberty of conscience is a sacred right; that power abused justifies resistance; and that civil authority is a delegation from the people—were not, I say, all this true, the Revolution would have been not an assertion but an invasion of rights; not a revolution but a rebellion. Cherish in your breasts this conviction, and act under its influence; detecting the odious doctrines which, had they been acted upon in this country, would have left us at this time wretched slaves—doctrines which imply that God made mankind to be oppressed and plundered, and which are no less a blasphemy against him than an insult on common sense….
You may reasonably expect that I should now close this address to you. But I cannot yet dismiss you. I must not conclude without recalling, particularly, to your recollection a consideration to which I have more than once alluded, and which, probably, your thoughts have been all along anticipating—a consideration with which my mind is impressed more than I can express. I mean, the consideration of the favorableness of the present times to all exertions in the cause of public liberty.
What an eventful period is this! I am thankful that I have lived to it; and I could almost say, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." I have lived to see a diffusion of knowledge which has undermined superstition and error—I have lived to see the rights of men better understood than ever; and nations panting for liberty which seemed to have lost the idea of it. I have lived to see thirty millions of people, indignant and resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty with an irresistible voice; their king led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his subjects. After sharing in the benefits of one revolution, I have been spared to be a witness to two other revolutions, both glorious. And now, methinks, I see the ardor for liberty catching and spreading; a general amendment beginning in human affairs; the dominion of priests giving way to the dominion of reason and conscience.
Be encouraged, all ye friends of freedom and writers in its defense! The times are auspicious. Your labors have not been in vain. Behold kingdoms, admonished by you, starting from sleep, breaking their fetters, and claiming justice from their oppressors! Behold, the light you have struck out, after setting America free, reflected to France, and there kindled into a blaze that lays despotism in ashes and warms and illuminates Europe!
Tremble, all ye oppressors of the world! Take warning all ye supporters of slavish governments and slavish hierarchies! Call no more (absurdly and wickedly) reformation innovation. You cannot now hold the world in darkness. Struggle no longer against increasing light and liberality. Restore to mankind their rights, and consent to the correction of abuses, before they and you are destroyed together.
Revolutionist Georges-Jacques Danton Demands Death for the Squeamish
"To conquer we have need to dare, to dare again, always to dare!"
Parisian Lawyer Georges-Jacques Danton was a tyrant in revolutionary clothing. He established himself as a patriot by helping lead the storming of the Tuileries in August 1792 to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy, but his passionate oratory and merciless zeal were directed more to the acquisition of power than to the dream of democracy. He professed not to care for popularity: "Let France be free, though my name be cursed." A few weeks after the success of the Revolution, and almost two years before the Reign of Terror, which led to his own execution on the guillotine, Danton made this speech on the defense of the new republic, already threatened by invading Prussians and Austrians. Though it is remembered for the line enshrining audacity, Danton's rallying call to the sans-culottes to defend the republic contained a proposal of the most draconian penalty for dissent.
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IT SEEMS A satisfaction for the ministers of a free people to announce to them that their country will be saved, All are stirred, all are enthused, all burn to enter the combat.
You know that Verdun is not yet in the power of our enemies and that its garrison swears to immolate the first who breathes a proposition of surrender.
One portion of our people will guard our frontiers, another will dig and arm the entrenchments, the third with pikes will defend the interior of our cities, Paris will second these great efforts. The commissioners of the Commune will solemnly proclaim to the citizens the invitation to arm and march to the defense of the country. At such a moment you can proclaim that the capital deserves the esteem of all France. At such a moment this National Assembly becomes a veritable committee of war. We ask that you concur with us in directing this sublime movement of the people, by naming commissioners to second and assist all these great measures. We ask that anyone refusing to give personal service or to furnish arms shall meet the punishment of death. We ask that proper instructions be given to the citizens to direct their movements. We ask that carriers be sent to all the departments to notify them of the decrees that you proclaim here. The tocsin we shall sound is not the alarm signal of danger; it orders the charge on the enemies of France. To conquer we have need to dare, to dare again, always to dare! And France will be saved!
(Pour les vaincre, il nous faut de l'audace; encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace; et la France est sauvée.)
Napoleon Exhorts His Troops against France's Enemies
"Let them tremble!"
After making a reputation for ferocity by giving a crowd of Parisian rioters what he called "a whiff of grapeshot"—and killing one hundred—Napoleon Bonaparte made his bid for power in 1796. He sold the French regime on a plan for an Italian campaign, married Josephine, and set out at the head of a ragtag French army.
He understood, as few commanders did, the need to take care of the essential needs of his men; "An army marches on its stomach" is a remark attributed to him, as well as "The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue." He determined to keep his men fed by living off the land in Italy, to rest them when possible, and to instill in them his own sense of destiny.
All his addresses to his troops began with the salutation "Soldiers!" He put pride in the word and, in crediting "his" army with triumphs, had no need to credit himself. In his oratory, he employed the internal dialogue ("Shall it be said of us…?") and the visionary quotation to promise fame ("Your fellow citizens, pointing you out, shall say, 'There goes one who…'"). Winston Churchill would use the same history-conscious construction in his predictive quotation "This was their finest hour."
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SOLDIERS: YOU ARE precipitated like a torrent from the heights of the Apennines; you have overthrown and dispersed all that dared to oppose your march. Piedmont, rescued from Austrian tyranny, is left to its natural sentiments of regard and friendship to the French. Milan is yours; and the republican standard is displayed throughout all Lombardy. The dukes of Parma and Moderna are indebted for their political existence only to your generosity.
The army, which so proudly menaced you, has had no other barrier than its dissolution to oppose your invincible courage. The Po, the Tessin, the Adds, could not retard you a single day. The vaunted bulwarks of Italy were insufficient. You swept them with the same rapidity that you did the Apennines. Those successes have carried joy into the bosom of your country. Your representatives decreed a festival dedicated to your victories, and to be celebrated throughout all the communes of the republic. Now your fathers, your mothers, your wives, and your sisters will rejoice in your success, and take pride in their relation to you.
Yes, soldiers, you have done much; but more still remains for you to do. Shall it be said of us, that we know how to conquer but not to profit by our victories? Shall posterity reproach us with having found a Capua in Lombardy? But already I see you fly to arms. You are fatigued with an inactive repose. You lament the days that are lost to your glory! Well, then, let us proceed; we have other forced marches to make, other enemies to subdue, more laurels to acquire, and more injuries to avenge.
Let those who have unsheathed the daggers of civil war in France, who have basely assassinated our ministers, who have burnt our ships at Toulon—let them tremble! The knell of vengeance has already tolled! But to quiet the apprehensions of the people, we declare ourselves the friends of all, and particularly of those who are the descendants of Brutus, of Scipio, and those other great men whom we have taken for our models.
To reestablish the capital, to replace the statues of those heroes who have rendered it immortal, to rouse the Roman people entranced in so many ages of slavery—this shall be the fruit of your victories. It will be an epoch for the admiration of posterity; you will enjoy the immortal glory of changing the aspect of affairs in the finest part of Europe. The free people of France, not regardless of moderation, shall accord to Europe a glorious peace; but it will indemnify itself for the sacrifices of every kind which it has been making for six years past. You will again be restored to your firesides and homes; and your fellow citizens, pointing you out, shall say, "There goes one who belonged to the army of Italy!"
Garibaldi Prepares Italy's Guerrillas for Battle
"The slave shall show at last to his free brothers a sharpened sword forged from the links of his fetters."
Giuseppe Garibaldi was among the first to understand how irregular troops—guerrillas, as they later came to be called—could wear down and defeat regular armies. He learned his profession as patriot and soldier under revolutionary leader Mazzini, and was condemned to death after the unsuccessful insurrection of 1832. Garibaldi escaped to South America and sharpened his command skills leading guerrillas in Brazil and Argentina; using that experience, he returned to Italy in 1859 to rout the Austrians for the Piedmont government. At the head of his thousand Redshirts, he seized Sicily and—after serving as dictator of half of what is now Italy for a couple of months—turned his nearly united nation over to King Victor Emmanuel II. Garibaldi is remembered as the unifier of the Italian nation; he might be more familiar to Americans had he taken up Abraham Lincoln's offer of a command in our Civil War.
This speech loses flavor in the translation, not only between languages, but from spoken exhortation to written word. But the unifier's call beyond his troops to Italian women—"Cast away all the cowards from your embraces; they will give you only cowards for children"—has a ring that leaps off the page.
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WE MUST NOW consider the period which is just drawing to a close as almost the last stage of our national resurrection, and prepare ourselves to finish worthily the marvelous design of the elect of twenty generations, the completion of which Providence has reserved for this fortunate age.
Yes, young men, Italy owes to you an undertaking which has merited the applause of the universe. You have conquered and you will conquer still, because you are prepared for the tactics that decide the fate of battles. You are not unworthy of the men who entered the ranks of a Macedonian phalanx, and who contended not in vain with the proud conquerors of Asia. To this wonderful page in our country's history another more glorious still will be added, and the slave shall show at last to his free brothers a sharpened sword forged from the links of his fetters.
To arms, then, all of you! all of you! And the oppressors and the mighty shall disappear like dust. You, too, women, cast away all the cowards from your embraces; they will give you only cowards for children, and you who are the daughters of the land of beauty must bear children who are noble and brave. Let timid doctrinaires depart from among us to carry their servility and their miserable fears elsewhere. This people is its own master. It wishes to be the brother of other peoples, but to look on the insolent with a proud glance, not to grovel before them imploring its own freedom. It will no longer follow in the trail of men whose hearts are foul. No! No! No!
Providence has presented Italy with Victor Emmanuel. Every Italian should rally round him. By the side of Victor Emmanuel every quarrel should be forgotten, all rancor depart. Once more I repeat my battle cry: "To arms, all—all of you!" If March 1861 does not find one million of Italians in arms, then alas for liberty, alas for the life of Italy. Ah, no, far be from me a thought which I loathe like poison. March of 1861, or if need be February, will find us all at our post—Italians of Calatafimi, Palermo, Ancona, the Volturno, Castelfidardo, and Isernia, and with us every man of this land who is not a coward or a slave. Let all of us rally round the glorious hero of Palestro and give the last blow to the crumbling edifice of tyranny. Receive, then, my gallant young volunteers, at the honored conclusion of ten battles, one word of farewell from me.
I utter this word with deepest affection and from the very bottom of my heart. Today I am obliged to retire, but for a few days only. The hour of battle will find me with you again, by the side of the champions of Italian liberty. Let those only return to their homes who are called by the imperative duties which they owe to their families, and those who by their glorious wounds have deserved the credit of their country. These, indeed, will serve Italy in their homes by their counsel, by the very aspect of the scars which adorn their youthful brows. Apart from these, let all others remain to guard our glorious banners. We shall meet again before long to march together to the redemption of our brothers who are still slaves of the stranger. We shall meet again before long to march to new triumphs.
Jefferson Davis Takes His Leave of the U.S. Senate
"I carry with me no hostile remembrance."
This was the most civil speech that ever prefigured a civil war. Jefferson Davis, senator from Mississippi, was a champion of southern rights and an advocate of the extension of slavery into the territories, but he was not one of the firebrand secessionists. After the election of Lincoln, when his state declared its intention to secede from the Union, Davis had no choice but to bid farewell to the Senate, which he did on January 21, 1861. He was soon elected president of the Confederate States of America.
Though his oratory never had the sonority or evocativeness of Lincoln's, and his words were derided as cold and sere and legalistic in the North, Davis showed a simplicity, dignity, and sense of sadness in his farewell to the Senate that echoed years later in the second, "malice toward none" inaugural address of his adversary.
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I RISE, MR. President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the state of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States. Under these circumstances. of course, my functions are terminated here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to my associates, and I will say but very little more. The occasion does not invite me to go into argument, and my physical condition would not permit me to do so if it were otherwise; and yet it seems to become me to say something on the part of the state I here represent, on an occasion so solemn as this.
It is known to senators who have served with me here that I have for many years advocated. as an essential attribute of state sovereignty, the right of a state to secede from the Union. Therefore, if I had not believed there was justifiable cause; if I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation, or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the government, because of my allegiance to the state of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. I, however, may be permitted to say that I do think that she has justifiable cause, and I approve of her act. I conferred with her people before that act was taken, counseled them then that, if the state of things which they apprehended should exist when the convention met, they should take the action which they have now adopted.
I hope none who hear me will confound this expression of mine with the advocacy of the right of a state to remain in the Union, and to disregard its constitutional obligations by the nullification of the law. Such is not my theory. Nullification and secession, so often confounded, are indeed antagonistic principles. Nullification is a remedy which it is sought to apply within the Union, and against the agent of the states. It is only to be justified when the agent has violated his constitutional obligation, and a state, assuming to judge for itself, denies the right of the agent thus to act, and appeals to the other states of the Union for a decision; but when the states themselves, and when the people of the states, have so acted as to convince us that they will not regard our constitutional rights, then, and then for the first time, arises the doctrine of secession in its practical application.
A great man who now reposes with his fathers, and who has been often arraigned for a want of fealty to the Union, advocated the doctrine of nullification, because it preserved the Union. It was because of his deep-seated attachment to the Union, his determination to find some remedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to the other states, that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within the limits of state power, not to disturb the Union, but only to be a means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the states for their judgment.
Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the states are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the states, will prevent anyone from denying that each state is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.
I therefore say I concur in the action of the people of Mississippi, believing it to be necessary and proper, and should have been bound by their action if my belief had been otherwise; and this brings me to the important point which I wish on this last occasion to present to the Senate. It is by this confounding of nullification and secession that the name of the great man whose ashes now mingle with his mother earth has been invoked to justify coercion against a seceded state. The phrase "to execute the laws" was an expression which General Jackson applied to the case of a state refusing to obey the laws while yet a member of the Union. That is not the case which is now presented. The laws are to be executed over the United States, and upon the people of the United States. They have no relation to any foreign country. It is a perversion of terms, at least it is a great misapprehension of the case, which cites that expression for application to a state which has withdrawn from the Union. You may make war on a foreign state. If it be the purpose of gentlemen. they may make war against a state which has withdrawn from the Union; but there are no laws of the United States to be executed within the limits of a seceded state. A state finding herself in the condition in which Mississippi has judged she is, in which her safety requires that she should provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the Union, surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be many), deprives herself of the advantages (they are known to be great), severs all the ties of affection (and they are close and enduring) which have bound her to the Union; and thus divesting herself of every benefit, taking upon herself every burden, she claims to be exempt from any power to execute the laws of the United States within her limits.
I well remember an occasion when Massachusetts was arraigned before the bar of the Senate, and when then the doctrine of coercion was rife and to be applied against her because of the rescue of a fugitive slave in Boston. My opinion then was the same that it is now. Not in a spirit of egotism, but to show that I am not influenced in my opinion because the case is my own, I refer to that time and that occasion as containing the opinion which I then entertained, and on which my present conduct is based. I then said, if Massachusetts, following her through a stated line of conduct, chooses to take the last step which separates her from the Union, it is her right to go, and I will neither vote one dollar nor one man to coerce her back, but will say to her, Godspeed, in memory of the kind associations which once existed between her and the other states.
It has been a conviction of pressing necessity; it has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi into her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races. That Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made. The communities were declaring their independence; the people of those communities were asserting that no man was born—to use the language of Mr. Jefferson—booted and spurred to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal—meaning the men of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended to families, but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the great principles they announced; these were the purposes for which they made their declaration; these were the end to which their enunciation was directed. They have no reference to the slave; else, how happened it that among the items of arraignment made against George III was that he endeavored to do just what the North had been endeavoring of late to do—to stir up insurrection among our slaves? Had the Declaration announced that the Negroes were free and equal, how was the prince to be arraigned for stirring up insurrection among them? And how was this to be enumerated among the high crimes which caused the colonies to sever their connection with the mother country? When our Constitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable, for there we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men—not even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion of three-fifths.
Then, senators, we recur to the compact which binds us together; we recur to the principles upon which our government was founded; and when you deny them, and when you deny to us the right to withdraw from a government which, thus perverted, threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence, and take the hazard. This is done not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit; but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our sacred duty to transmit unshorn to our children.
I find in myself, perhaps, a type of the general feeling of my constituents toward yours. I am sure I feel no hostility to you, senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you well; and such, I am sure, is the feeling of the people whom I represent toward those whom you represent. I therefore feel that I but express their desire when I say I hope, and they hope, for peaceful relations with you, though we must part. They may be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they have been in the past, if you so will it. The reverse may bring disaster on every portion of the country; and if you will have it thus, we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God, and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.
In the course of my service here, associated at different times with a great variety of senators, I see now around me some with whom I have served long; there have been points of collision; but whatever of offense there has been to me, I leave here; I carry with me no hostile remembrance. Whatever offense I have given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have, senators, in this hour of our parting, to offer you my apology for any pain which, in heat of discussion, I have inflicted. I go hence unencumbered of the remembrance of any injury received, and having discharged the duty of making the only reparation in my power for any injury offered.
Mr. President and senators, having made the announcement which the occasion seemed to me to require, it only remains for me to bid you a final adieu.
Chief Joseph Surrenders
"From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, known to his people as Thunder Traveling to the Loftier Mountain Heights, with bullet holes riddling his robes, surrendered to the U.S. Army in 1877. His words were interpreted by a scout and taken down by an artist for Harper's Weekly, and come up at the reader from the depths of defeat.
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TELL GENERAL HOWARD I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking-Glass is dead, Ta-Hool-Hool-Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.
President Woodrow Wilson Presents an Ideal to the War Congress
"The world must be made safe for democracy."
When the United States prepared to enter the First World War (known at the time as the Great War), President Woodrow Wilson called Congress into session on April 2, 1917, and denounced German submarine attacks on commerce as "a war against all nations." Within four days after making the speech, Wilson approved Congress's official declaration of war against Germany.
Wilson's style was professorial but inspiring. In even, measured phrases, Wilson's words point to principle, not selfish interests, as the motive for war. He envisions that principle as the rallying point for all Americans; in fact, his most frequent sentence starter is the collective pronoun "we" in outlining the country's intentions both to Congress and to the world. Wilson's final sentence underscores his moral certainty of America's course ("God helping her, she can do no other"), with its direct allusion to Martin Luther's moral stance in his speech to the Diet of Worms: "Here I stand; God helping me, I can do no other."
Regarding this speech's best-known line, the American historian James Harvey Robinson commented two decades after Wilson's call for war, "With supreme irony, the war to 'make the world safe for democracy' ended by leaving democracy more unsafe in the world than at any time since the collapse of the revolutions of 1848." For a time, his international idealism was derided, as was his arrogant attitude toward the Congress that helped defeat American participation in the League of Nations, but by the end of the twentieth century, Wilson's crusade for the self-determination of nations had gained moral acceptance and political momentum.
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GENTLEMEN OF THE Congress: I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.
On the third of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the imperial German government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the imperial government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.
I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meager enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right the German government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.
It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.
When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last, I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.
With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the imperial German government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.
What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war of at least five hundred thousand men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well-conceived taxation.
I say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation because it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now be necessary entirely on money borrowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our people so far as we may against the very serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out of the inflation which would be produced by vast loans.
In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished, we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the equipment of our own military forces with the duty—for it will be a very practical duty—of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are in the field, and we should help them in every way to be effective there.
I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive departments of the government, for the consideration of your committees, measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the government upon which the responsibility of conducting the war and safeguarding the nation will most directly fall.
While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world, what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them. I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the twenty-second of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the third of February and on the twenty-sixth of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs.
A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.
Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off, and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their native majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honor.
One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries, and our commerce. Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the imperial government accredited to the government of the United States. Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them, we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people toward us (who were no doubt as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.
We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.
Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.
I have said nothing of the governments allied with the imperial government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honor. The Austro-Hungarian government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the imperial German government, and it has therefore not been possible for this government to receive Count Tarnowski, the ambassador recently accredited to this government by the imperial and royal government of Austria-Hungary; but that government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.
It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us—however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship—exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.
It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
Lenin Defends Proletarian Dictatorship
"History teaches that no oppressed class has ever come into power, and cannot come into power, without passing through a period of dictatorship."
From Russian Revolutionist to Soviet Premier, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin worked for the social upheaval outlined in his 1917 State and Revolution: "The substitution of the proletarian for the bourgeois state is impossible without a violent revolution."
After the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin led his Bolshevik party to power and. as chairman of the Communist party, ruled from then until his death in 1924. A powerful orator, he delivered the following speech before the 1919 Communist International Congress.
Denying the efficacy of "democracy in general," Lenin upholds the "proletariat," a term borrowed from the Latin proletarius, for any member of the lowest class in ancient Roman society. By drawing a distinction between "dictatorship in general" and "dictatorship of the proletariat," Lenin redefines a number of terms, with sarcastic reference to "equality" and "freedom" in capitalist usage. The movement from bourgeois rule to proletarian dictatorship, according to Lenin, will lead to "democratism by the toiling classes."
Later, Lenin derided "the saying that Russia is a prison of nations," but the internal and external empire he built was pockmarked by the gulag archipelago, or network of prison camps. Economic strains and a yearning for freedom broke it into its historical component parts seven decades after the supposedly temporary, but in fact unending, period of dictatorship. In this speech, the disciplined revolutionist makes the case that the end of socialism justifies the means of dictatorship; it was later shown that the means become the ends.
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THE GROWTH OF the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all countries has called forth convulsive efforts of the bourgeoisie, and its agents in workmen's organizations, to find ideal political arguments in defense of the rule of the exploiters. Among these arguments stands out particularly condemnation of dictatorship and defense of democracy. The falseness and hypocrisy of such an argument, which has been repeated in thousands of forms in the capitalist press and at the conference of the yellow International in February 1919, Berne, are evident to all who have not wished to betray the fundamental principle of socialism.
First of all, this argument is used with certain interpretations of "democracy in general" and "dictatorship in general" without raising the point as to which class one has in mind. Such a statement of the question, leaving out of consideration the question of class as though it were a general national matter, is direct mockery of the fundamental doctrine of socialism, namely, the doctrine of class struggle, which the socialists who have gone over to the side of the bourgeoisie recognize when they talk, but forget when they act. For in no civilized capitalist country does there exist "democracy in general" but there exists only bourgeois democracy, and one is speaking not of "dictatorship in general" but of dictatorship of the oppressed classes, that is, of the proletariat with respect to the oppressors and exploiters, that is, the bourgeoisie, in order to overcome the resistance which the exploiters make in their struggle to preserve their rule.
History teaches that no oppressed class has ever come into power, and cannot come into power, without passing through a period of dictatorship, that is, the conquest of power and the forcible suppression of the most desperate and mad resistance which does not hesitate to resort to any crimes, such has always been shown by the exploiters. The bourgeoisie, whose rule is now defended by the socialists who speak against "dictatorship in general" and who espouse the cause of "democracy in general" has won power in the progressive countries at the price of a series of uprisings, civil wars, forcible suppression of kings, feudal lords, and slave owners, and of their attempts at restoration. The socialists of all countries in their books and pamphlets, in the resolutions of their congresses, in their propaganda speeches, have explained to the people thousands and millions of times the class character of these bourgeois revolutions, and of this bourgeois dictatorship. Therefore the present defense of bourgeois democracy in the form of speeches about "democracy in general" and the present wails and shouts against the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of wails about "dictatorship in general" are a direct mockery of socialism, and represent in fact going over to the bourgeoisie and denying the right of the proletariat to its own proletariat revolution, and a defense of bourgeois reformism, precisely at the historic moment when bourgeois reformism is collapsing the world over, and when the war has created a revolutionary situation.
All socialists who explain the class character of bourgeois civilization, or bourgeois democracy, of bourgeois parliamentarism, express the thought which Marx and Engels expressed with the most scientific exactness when they said that the most democratic bourgeois republic is nothing more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the mass of the toilers by a handful of capitalists. There is not a single revolutionist, not a single Marxist of all those who are now shouting against dictatorship and for democracy, who would not have sworn before the workmen that he recognizes this fundamental truth of socialism. And now, when the revolutionary proletariat begins to act and move for the destruction of this machinery of oppression, and to win the proletarian dictatorship, these traitors to socialism report the situation as though the bourgeoisie were giving the laborers pure democracy, as though the bourgeoisie were abandoning resistance and were ready to submit to the majority of the toilers, as though there were no state machinery for the suppression of labor by capital in a democratic republic.
Workmen know very well that "freedom of meetings," even in the most democratic bourgeois republic is an empty phrase, for the rich have all the best public and private buildings at their disposal, and also sufficient leisure time for meetings and for protection of these meetings by the bourgeois apparatus of authority. The proletarians of the city and of the village, and the poor peasants, that is, the overwhelming majority of the population, have none of these three things. So long as the situation is such, "equality," that is, "pure democracy," is sheer fraud.
The capitalists have always called "freedom" the freedom to make money for the rich, and the freedom to die of hunger for workmen. The capitalists call "freedom" the freedom of the rich, freedom to buy up the press, to use wealth, to manufacture and support so-called public opinion. The defenders of "pure democracy" again in actual fact turn out to be the defenders of the most dirty and corrupt system of the rule of the rich over the means of education of the masses. They deceive the people by attractive, fine-sounding, beautiful but absolutely false phrases, trying to dissuade the masses from the concrete historic task of freeing the press from the capitalists who have gotten control of it. Actual freedom and equality will exist only in the order established by the Communists, in which it will be impossible to become rich at the expense of another, where it will be impossible either directly or indirectly to subject the press to the power of money, where there will be no obstacle to prevent any toiler from enjoying and actually realizing the equal right to the use of public printing presses and of the public fund of paper.
Dictatorship of the proletariat resembles dictatorship of other classes in that it was called forth by the need to suppress the forcible resistance of a class that was losing its political rulership. But that which definitely distinguishes a dictatorship of the proletariat from a dictatorship of other classes, from a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in all the civilized capitalist countries, is that the dictatorship of the landlords and of the bourgeoisie was the forcible suppression of the resistance of the overwhelming majority of the population, namely, the toilers. On the other hand, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, that is, of an insignificant minority of the population—of landlords and capitalists.
It therefore follows that a dictatorship of the proletariat must necessarily carry with it not only changes in the form and institutions of democracy, speaking in general terms, but specifically such a change as would secure an extension such as has never been seen in the history of the world of the actual use of democratism by the toiling classes.
Mussolini Justifies His Invasion of Ethiopia
"To acts of war, we shall answer with acts of war."
Il Duce (The Leader) was the title assumed by Benito Mussolini, Italy's Fascist dictator from 1922 to 1943. At first cool to Hitler, he joined his fellow dictator as France was falling to German arms. ("The hand that held the dagger," said FDR, "has struck it into the back of its neighbor.") When the Allies invaded Sicily in World War II, Mussolini was removed from power and placed under arrest, but he was rescued by the Germans. After an unsuccessful attempt to reorganize his government in 1945, he was shot while trying to escape to Germany in the guise of a German soldier.
At the height of his power, however, Mussolini gave forceful speeches to his Fascist followers. (The term "Fascist" comes from the Italian fascia, which means "group, bundle"; the most frequent line of defense for the corporate state of fascism was the 1930s expression "But you must admit that Mussolini made the trains run on time.") He had a way with metaphor, exclaiming in 1934, "We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty." The following speech, broadcast on October 2, 1933, announced the invasion of Ethiopia.
Using metonymy, Mussolini begins by addressing the "Blackshirts of revolution," referring to the paramilitary Fascist force that helped him seize power in the 1922 march on Rome. His nationalistic appeals, often exclamatory ("Italy! Italy! entirely and universally Fascist!"), lead to the anaphora of the closing sentences: "It is the cry of Italy…. It is the cry of justice and of victory."
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BLACKSHIRTS OF REVOLUTION, men and women of all Italy, Italians all over the world, beyond the mountains, beyond the seas, listen. A solemn hour is about to strike in the history of the country. Twenty million Italians are at this moment gathered in the squares of all Italy. It is the greatest demonstration that human history records. Twenty millions, one heart alone, one will alone, one decision.
This manifestation signifies that the tie between Italy and fascism is perfect, absolute, unalterable. Only brains softened by puerile illusions, by sheer ignorance, can think differently, because they do not know what exactly is the Fascist Italy of 1935.
For many months the wheel of destiny and of the impulse of our calm determination moves toward the goal. In these last hours the rhythm has increased and nothing can stop it now.
It is not only an army marching towards its goal, but it is forty-four million Italians marching in unity behind this army. Because the blackest of injustices is being attempted against them, that of taking from them their place in the sun. When in 1915 Italy threw in her fate with that of the Allies, how many cries of admiration, how many promises were heard? But after the common victory, which cost Italy six hundred thousand dead, four hundred thousand lost, one million wounded, when peace was being discussed around the table only the crumbs of a rich colonial booty were left for us to pick up. For thirteen years we have been patient while the circle tightened around us at the hands of those who wish to suffocate us.
We have been patient with Ethiopia for forty years. It is enough now.
The League of Nations, instead of recognizing the rights of Italy, dares talk of sanctions, but until there is proof of the contrary, I refuse to believe that the authentic people of France will join in supporting sanctions against Italy. Six hundred thousand dead whose devotion was so heroic that the enemy commander justly admired them—those fallen would now turn in their graves.
And until there is proof to the contrary, I refuse to believe that the authentic people of Britain will want to spill blood and send Europe into a catastrophe for the sake of a barbarian country, unworthy of ranking among civilized nations. Nevertheless, we cannot afford to overlook the possible developments of tomorrow.
To economic sanctions, we shall answer with our discipline, our spirit of sacrifice, our obedience. To military sanctions, we shall answer with military measures. To acts of war, we shall answer with acts of war.
A people worthy of their past and their name cannot and never will take a different stand. Let me repeat, in the most categorical manner, that the sacred pledge which I make at this moment, before all the Italians gathered together today, is that I shall do everything in my power to prevent a colonial conflict from taking on the aspect and weight of a European war.
This conflict may be attractive to certain minds which hope to avenge their disintegrated temples through this new catastrophe. Never, as at this historical hour, have the people of Italy revealed such force of character, and it is against this people to which mankind owes its greatest conquest, this people of heroes, of poets and saints, of navigators, of colonizers, that the world dares threaten sanctions.
Italy! Italy! entirely and universally Fascist! The Italy of the blackshirt revolution, rise to your feet; let the cry of your determination rise to the skies and reach our soldiers in East Africa. Let it be a comfort to those who are about to fight. Let it be an encouragement to our friends and a warning to our enemies. It is the cry of Italy which goes beyond the mountains and the seas out into the great world. It is the cry of justice and of victory.
Hitler Declares Germany's Intentions
"The world would then see, as quick as lightning, to what extent this Reich, people, party, and these armed forces are fanatically inspired with one spirit, one will."
"Strength lies not in defense but in attack," wrote Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf ("My Battle"), translated into English in 1933. The assault strategy was applied to the content of his oratory: "The great masses of the people… will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
In his rise from the rank of a World War I corporal to that of dictator of Nazi Germany, Austrian-born Hitler used attacks based on violent anti-Semitism and totalitarian tactics to murder his opponents and support the aims of his "Third Reich," or third German empire. In the twelve years that followed his seizing of power in 1933, Der Führer (the Leader) was responsible for the mass murder of millions of Jews and other innocents. Shortly after his suicide in 1945, Germany announced an unconditional surrender to end the Second World War.
Hitler's speeches often lacked the strength of coherence, but with slashing racism and the powerful imagery of nationalism, he was able to delight and control crowds resentful of the reminders of past defeat—what he derided as "the death sentence of Versailles." On February 20, 1938, the chancellor addressed the Reichstag, formed during the Second Reich as the lower chamber of Germany's federal parliament; in this speech, Hitler speaks repeatedly of German strength and indicates his dark intentions toward Europe. The inimical language includes a warning based on an Ibsen phrase ("Whoever disturbs this mission is the enemy of the people"), and Hitler rounds out his Reich rhetoric with parallel structure, seeking divine intervention to bless "our work, our deeds, our foresight, our resolve."
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…WE HAVE SEEN that a certain portion of the foreign press inundated the new Reich with a virtual flood of lies and calumnies. It was a remarkable mixture of arrogance and deplorable ignorance which led them to act as the judges of a people who should be presented as models to these democratic apostles.
The best proof for showing up these lies is success. For if we had acted during these five years like the democratic world citizens of Soviet Russia, that is, like those of the Jewish race, we would not have succeeded in making out of a Germany which was in the deepest material collapse a country of material order. For this very reason we claim the right to surround our work with that protection which renders it impossible for criminal elements or for the insane to disturb it.
Whoever disturbs this mission is the enemy of the people, whether he pursues his aim as a Bolshevist democrat, a revolutionary terrorist, or a reactionary dreamer. In such a time of necessity those who act in the name of God are not those who, citing Bible quotations, wander idly about the country and spend the day partly doing nothing and partly criticizing the work of others; but those whose prayers take the highest form of uniting man with his God, that is, the form of work.
I had a right to turn against every one who, instead of helping, thought his mission was to criticize our work. Foreign nations contributed nothing apart from this spirit, for their rejection was tinged by hate or a spirit of knowing better than we know.
It was the ABC of our creed to find help in our own strength. The standard of living of the nation is the outcome of its total production; in other words, the value of every wage and salary corresponds to the volume of goods produced as a result of the work performed. This is a very unpopular doctrine in a time resounding with cries such as "higher wages and less work."
Next to the United States, Germany today has become the greatest steel country in the world. I could give many more examples. They are documentary proof of the work such as our people never before achieved. To these successes will be added in a few years the gigantic results of the Four-Year Plan. Is it not a joke of history when those very countries which themselves have only crises think they can criticize us and give us advice?
We have given the German nation that weapon of steel which presents a wall at our frontiers against the intentions of the malicious international press campaign.
At the conclusion of the next decade the German people will bear in mind the success of their efficiency and will be filled with a supreme pride. One of these achievements is the construction of a national leadership which is as far removed from parliamentary democracy as it is from military dictatorship.
If ever international agitation or poisoning of opinion should attempt to rupture the peace of the Reich, then steel and iron would take the German people and German homesteads under their protection. The world would then see, as quick as lightning, to what extent this Reich, people, party, and these armed forces are fanatically inspired with one spirit, one will.
If Great Britain should suddenly dissolve today and England become dependent solely on her own territory, then the people there would, perhaps, have more understanding of the seriousness of the economic tasks which confront us. If a nation which commands no gold reserves, no foreign exchange—not because National Socialism reigns but because a parliamentary, democratic state was exploited for fifteen years by a world hungry after loot—in other words, if a nation which must feed 140 people to the square kilometer and has no colonies, if a nation which lacks numerous raw materials and is not willing to live an illusory life through credits, reduces the number of its unemployed in five years to nil and improves its standard of living, then all those should remain silent who, despite great economic advantages, scarcely succeed in solving their own unemployment problems.
The claim for German colonial possessions, therefore, will be voiced from year to year with increasing vigor. These possessions, which Germany did not take away from other countries and which today are practically of no value to these powers, are indispensable for our own people.
I should like to refute here the hope that such claims can be averted by granting credits. Above all, we do not wish for naive assurances that we shall be permitted to buy what we need. We reject such statements once and for all.
You will not expect me to discuss in detail the individual international plans which appear to arouse the varied interests of the various governments. They are too uncertain and they lack the clarity necessary for me to be able to express myself on these questions. Above all, however, take note of my deep-seated distrust of all so-called conferences which may provide interesting hours of conversation for those taking part in them, but generally lead to the disappointment of hopeful mankind.
I cannot allow our natural claims to be coupled with political business. Recently rumors have been cropping up, rumors that Germany was about to revise her opinion concerning her return to the League of Nations. I should like again to declare that in 1919 the peace treaty was forced upon some countries. This treaty brought in its train far-reaching inroads upon the lives of the peoples involved. The rape of national and economic destinies and of the communal lives of the nations took place under a cloud of moralizing phrases which, perhaps, tended to salve the uneasy conscience of those who instituted the affair.
After the revision of the map of the world and of territorial and racial spheres, which was as thorough as it was fundamental, had been effected by means of force, a League of Nations was founded whose task it was to crystallize these crazy, unreasonable proceedings and to coordinate its results into an everlasting and unalterable basis of life.
I notice very often that English politicians would be glad to give back to us our colonies if they were not so disturbed by the thought of the wrong and violence which would thus be done to the native inhabitants.
All those colonial empires have not come into being through plebiscites. They are today naturally integral parts of the states in question and form, as such, part of that world order which always has been designated to us, especially by democratic policies, as the "world order of right."
That right the League of Nations now has been ordered to protect. I cannot understand why a nation which itself has been robbed by force should join such illustrious company, and I cannot permit the conclusion to be drawn that we should not be prepared to fight for the principles of justice just because we are not in the League of Nations. On the contrary, we do not belong to the League of Nations, because we believe that it is not an institution of justice but an institution for defending the interests of Versailles.
A number of material considerations must, however, be added.
First, we left the League of Nations because—loyal to its origin and obligations—it refused us the right to equal armament and just as equal security.
Second, we will never reenter it, because we do not intend to allow ourselves to be used anywhere in the world by a majority vote of the League of Nations for the defense of an injustice.
Third, we believe we will please all those nations who are misled by misfortune to rely on and trust the League of Nations as a factor of genuine help. We should have regarded it as more correct, for instance, in the case of the Ethiopian war, for the League to have shown more understanding for vital Italian needs and less disposition to help the Ethiopians with promises. This would, perhaps, have enabled a more simple and reasonable solution for the whole problem.
Fourth, on no account will we allow the German nation to become entangled in conflicts in which the nation itself is not interested. We are not willing to stand up for the territorial or economic interests of others without the slightest benefits to Germans being visible. Moreover, we ourselves do not expect such support from others. Germany is determined to impose upon herself wise moderation in her interests and demands. But if German interests should be seriously at stake we shall not expect to receive support from the League of Nations but we shall assume the right from the beginning to shoulder our task ourselves.
Fifth, we do not intend to allow our attitude to be determined in the future by any international institution which, while excluding official recognition of indisputable facts, resembles less the acts of a man of considered judgment than the habits of a certain type of large bird. The interests of nations in so far as their existence or nonexistence are ultimately concerned are stronger than formalistic considerations. For in the year 2038 it is possible that new states may have arisen or others disappeared without this new state of affairs having been registered at Geneva.
Germany will not take part in such unreasonable proceedings by being a member of the League of Nations.
With one country alone have we scorned to enter into relations. That state is Soviet Russia. We see in bolshevism more now than before the incarnation of human destructive forces. We do not blame the Russian people as such for this gruesome ideology of destruction. We know it is a small Jewish intellectual group which led a great nation into this position of madness. If this doctrine would confine itself territorially to Russia maybe one could put up with it. Alas, Jewish international bolshevism attempts to hollow out the nations of the world from its Soviet center.
As I have more than once stated, Germany has in Europe no more territorial demands to make of France. With the return of the Saar we trust the period of Franco-German territorial differences is finally closed.
Germany also has no quarrel with England apart from her colonial wishes. However, there is no cause for any conceivable conflict. The only thing that has poisoned and thus injured the common life of these two countries is the utterly unendurable press campaign which in these two countries has existed under the motto "freedom of personal opinion."
The British government desires the limitation of armaments or the prohibition of bombing. I myself proposed this some time ago. However, I also suggested at the time that the most important thing was to prevent the poisoning of the world's public opinion by infamous press articles. That which strengthened our sympathy with Italy, if this were possible, is the fact that in that country state policy and press policy tread the same road.
There are more than ten million Germans in states adjoining Germany which before 1866 were joined to the bulk of the German nation by a national link. Until 1918 they fought in the Great War shoulder to shoulder with the German soldiers of the Reich. Against their own free will they were prevented by peace treaties from uniting with the Reich.
This was painful enough, but there must be no doubt about one thing: political separation from the Reich may not lead to deprivation of rights, that is the general rights of racial self-determination which were solemnly promised to us in Wilson's Fourteen Points as a condition for the armistice. We cannot disregard it just because this is a case concerning Germans.
In the long run it is unbearable for a world power, conscious of herself, to know there are citizens at her side who are constantly being inflicted with the severest sufferings for their sympathy or unity with the total nation, its faith and philosophy.
We will know there can scarcely be a frontier line in Europe which satisfies all. It should be all the more important to avoid the torture of national minorities in order not to add to the suffering of political separation, the suffering of persecution on account of their belonging to a certain people.
That it is possible to find ways leading to the lessening of tension has been proved. But he who tries to prevent by force such lessening of tension through creating an equilibrium in Europe will someday inevitably conjure up force among the nations themselves. It cannot be denied that Germany herself, as long as she was powerless and defenseless, was compelled to tolerate many of these continual persecutions of the German people on our frontier.
But just as England stands up for her interests all over the globe, present-day Germany will know how to guard its more restricted interests. To these interests of the German Reich belong also the protection of those German peoples who are not in a position to secure along our frontiers their political and philosophical freedom by their own efforts.
I may say that since the League of Nations has abandoned its continuous attempts at disturbance in Danzig and since the advent of the new commissioner this most dangerous place for European peace has entirely lost its menace.
Poland respects the national conditions in the free city of Danzig and Germany respects Polish rights.
Now I turn to Austria. It is not only the same people but above all a long communal history and culture which bind together the Reich and Austria.
Difficulties which emerged in the carrying out of the agreement of July 11, 1936, made essential an attempt to remove misunderstandings and obstacles to final reconciliation. It is clear that whether we wished it or not an intolerable position might have developed that would have contained the seeds of catastrophe. It does not lie in the power of man to stop the rolling stone of fate which through neglect or lack of wisdom has been set moving.
I am happy to say that these ideas correspond with the viewpoint of the Austrian chancellor, whom I invited to visit me. The underlying intention was to bring about a détente in our relations which would guarantee to National Socialist sympathizers in Austria within the limits of the law the same rights enjoyed by other citizens.
In connection with it there was to be an act of conciliation in the form of a general amnesty and better understanding between the two states through closer and friendlier relations in the various spheres of cultural, political, and economic cooperation. All this is a development within the framework of the treaty of July 11.
I wish to pay tribute to the Austrian chancellor for his efforts to find together with me a way which is just as much in the interests of both countries as in that of the entire German people, whose sons we all are regardless of where we came from. I believe we have thus made a contribution to European peace.
Our satisfactory relations with other countries are known to all. Above all is to be mentioned our cooperation with those two great powers which, like Germany, have recognized bolshevism as a world danger and are therefore determined to resist the Comintern with a common defense. It is my earnest wish to see this cooperation with Italy and Japan more and more extended.
The German people is no warlike nation. It is a soldierly one which means it does not want a war but does not fear it. It loves peace, but it also loves its honor and freedom.
The new Reich shall belong to no class, no profession, but to the German people. It shall help the people find an easier road in this world. It shall help them in making their lot a happier one. Party, state, armed forces, economics are institutions and functions which can only be estimated as a means toward an end. They will be judged by history according to the services they render toward this goal. Their purpose, however, is to serve the people.
I now pray to God that he will bless in the years to come our work, our deeds, our foresight, our resolve; that the almighty may protect us from both arrogance and cowardly servility, that he may help us find the right way which he has laid down for the German people and that he may always give us courage to do the right thing and never to falter or weaken before any power or any danger.
Long live Germany and the German people!
Winston Churchill Braces Britons to Their Task
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
When Winston Churchill addressed Parliament on May 13, 1940, he had just been appointed prime minister, a position that he held from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 until his retirement in 1955. His Conservative party sought to ready England for defense in the face of Nazi aggression, and Churchill rallied his country after succeeding Neville Chamberlain, a prime minister who thought he had achieved "peace for our time," in the appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938.
Churchill delivered speeches eminently suited for quoting, their memorable phrases ranging from "their finest hour" to "iron curtain." But no orator can guarantee that his prose will survive the editing of history: this 1940 speech about "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" is now often identified by the altered quotation "blood, sweat, and tears." (The editing is apt; "toil" and "sweat" are redundant.) Curiously, common usage prefers to begin sequential phrases with "blood": Otto von Bismarck's warlike 1862 Eisen und Blut was also switched around to "blood and iron."
The German threat, memorably described by Churchill as "a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime," is the foremost concern of the new prime minister. Addressing the House of Commons, he uses repetition and alliteration ("many, many months of struggle and suffering") to pound home the period of stress and sacrifice ahead. Through answers to his countrymen's questions ("You ask, what is our policy?" and "You ask, what is our aim?"), Churchill outlines his intentions for England during the onset of World War II.
***
ON FRIDAY EVENING last I received from His Majesty the mission to form a new administration.
It was the evident will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties.
I have already completed the most important part of this task. A war cabinet has been formed of five members, representing, with the Labour, Opposition, and Liberals, the unity of the nation.
It was necessary that this should be done in one single day on account of the extreme urgency and rigor of events. Other key positions were filled yesterday. I am submitting a further list to the king tonight. I hope to complete the appointment of principal ministers during tomorrow.
The appointment of other ministers usually takes a little longer. I trust when Parliament meets again this part of my task will be completed and that the administration will be complete in all respects.
I considered it in the public interest to suggest to the Speaker that the House should be summoned today. At the end of today's proceedings, the adjournment of the House will be proposed until May 21 with provision for earlier meeting if need be. Business for that will be notified to MPs at the earliest opportunity.
I now invite the House by a resolution to record its approval of the steps taken and declare its confidence in the new government. The resolution:
"That this House welcomes the formation of a government representing the united and inflexible resolve of the nation to prosecute the war with Germany to a victorious conclusion."
To form an administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself. But we are in the preliminary phase of one of the greatest battles in history. We are in action at many other points—in Norway and in Holland—and we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean. The air battle is continuing, and many preparations have to be made here at home.
In this crisis I think I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today, and I hope that any of my friends and colleagues or former colleagues who are affected by the political reconstruction will make all allowances for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act.
I say to the House as I said to ministers 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 months of struggle and suffering.
You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might 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 human 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 long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.
Let that be realized. No survival 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.
I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men.
I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, "Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."
Churchill Rallies the British People after the "Miracle of Deliverance" at Dunkirk
"We shall not flag or fail… We shall fight on the beaches… we shall fight in the fields and in the streets… we shall never surrender."
The evacuation of 340,000 British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk on the continent of Europe, with 40,000 left behind to be taken prisoner by the Nazi forces, was called by Churchill "a miracle of deliverance," as if it were a kind of allied victory. But the retreat to the beaches and across the English Channel on May 26 and 27, 1940, was—as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was reported to have said privately afterward—"the greatest military defeat for many centuries."
He spoke to the House of Commons on June 4, as directional signs were being taken down at crossroads throughout Britain in anticipation of Hitler's invasion. Three weeks before, he had delivered his speech offering nothing but "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" (see p. 143) but showing "buoyancy and hope" and concluding with a ringing "let us go forward together with our united strength." That was before Allied forces suffered a crushing defeat and the real possibility of the landing of German troops swept the country. Now a longer speech in a more somber mood was required, containing a report more detailed in its military analysis, and with some silver lining seen in the war cloud.
After reviewing the tactical defenses put up by the British, French, and Belgian "armies of the north," he reported how "the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe" around them. By showing how "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army… seemed about to perish or be led into an ignominious and starving captivity," he accentuated the worst case possible, which made the successful retreat a "miracle of deliverance" for which Britain should be grateful. His repetition of the biblical word "deliverance" was the cue to the press to refer to "the miracle of Dunkirk." By emphasizing the scope of the losses that were not suffered, the new prime minister lessened the impact of the defeat that took place.
Churchill was careful not to destroy his credibility by overtly minimizing the defeat that drove the British from the Continent and would be followed in three weeks by the surrender of France. "We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations." Then came his crucial and upbeat but: "But there is a victory inside this deliverance… gained by the air force." Only after paying tribute to the few thousand young airmen who beat back the Luftwaffe in this engagement, and calling their future defense of the realm an unprecedented "opportunity for youth," did Churchill admit that the past week had been "a colossal military disaster."
The "We shall not flag or fail" peroration is as inspiring as any written in the twentieth century. He first sounds a note of defiance, "whatever the cost may be," then uses "we shall fight" seven times, culminating in "we shall never surrender." As a participant in World War I and as an historian, Churchill was surely familiar with the French leader Georges Clemenceau's defiant formulation in 1918, translated as "I shall fight in front of Paris, within Paris, behind Paris." Consciously or not, Churchill echoed that theme and improved on its rhythm in his unforgettable "We shall fight on the beaches… we shall fight in the fields and in the streets… we shall never surrender." (This may be apocryphal, but in the roar of cheering and applause that followed in the House of Commons, he added in an aside to a colleague, "And we'll fight them with the butt ends of broken beer bottles, because that's bloody well all we've got!")
Most orators would have ended on that high never-surrender note. But what makes Churchill's peroration especially powerful is its double change of pace and mood at the end: first solemnly recognizing the terrible consequences of failure with Britons "subjugated and starving," then ameliorating this depressing prospect with an expression of confidence that the New World—that is, the United States—supported by surviving British seapower, would "step forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."
***
…WHEN A WEEK ago today I asked the House to fix this afternoon for the occasion of a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce from this box the greatest military disaster of our long history.
I thought, and there were good judges who agreed with me, that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be reembarked, but it certainly seemed that the whole French First Army and the whole British Expeditionary Force, north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up in open field or else have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition.
These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called on the House and nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British armies in the later years of the war, seemed due to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity….
The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British Army at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea of more than thirty miles' length which otherwise would have been cut off. In doing this and closing this flank, contact was lost inevitably between the British and two of three corps forming the First French Army, who were then further from the coast than we were. It seemed impossible that large numbers of Allied troops could reach the coast. The enemy attacked on all sides in great strength and fierceness, and their main power, air force, was thrown into the battle…. For four or five days the intense struggle raged. All armored divisions, or what was left of them, together with great masses of German infantry and artillery, hurled themselves on the ever-narrowing and contracting appendix within which the British and French armies fought.
Meanwhile the Royal Navy, with the willing help of countless merchant seamen and a host of volunteers, strained every nerve and every effort and every craft to embark the British and Allied troops. Over 220 light warships and more than 650 other vessels were engaged. They had to approach this difficult coast, often in adverse weather, under almost ceaseless hail of bombs and increasing concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas themselves free from mines and torpedoes.
It was in conditions such as these that our men carried on with little or no rest for days and nights, moving troops across dangerous waters and bringing with them always the men whom they had rescued. The numbers they brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage. Hospital ships, which were plainly marked, were the special target for Nazi bombs, but the men and women aboard them never faltered in their duty.
Meanwhile the Royal Air Force, which had already been intervening in the battle so far as its range would allow it to go from home bases, now used a part of its main metropolitan fighter strength to strike at German bombers…. The struggle was protracted and fierce. Suddenly the scene has cleared, the crash and thunder has momentarily, but only for the moment, died away…. A miracle of deliverance… is manifest to us all. The enemy was hurled back by the retreating British and French troops. He was so roughly handled that he dared not molest their departure seriously. The Royal Air Force decisively defeated the main strength of the German Air Force and inflicted on them a loss of at least four to one. And the navy, using nearly 1,000 ships of all kinds, carried over 335,000 men, French and British, from the jaws of death back to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately before them.
We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance which must be noted…. Can you conceive of a greater objective for the power of Germany in the air than to make all evacuations from these beaches impossible and to sink all of the ships, numbering almost 1,000? Could there have been an incentive of greater military importance and significance to the whole purpose of the war?
They tried hard and were beaten back. They were frustrated in their task; we have got the armies away…. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The great French Army was very largely… cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it not be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen?
There never has been, I suppose, in all the history of the world such opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table and Crusaders have fallen back into distant days, not only distant but prosaic; but these young men are going forth every morning, going forth holding in their hands an instrument of colossal shattering power, of whom it may be said that "every morn brought forth a noble chance and every chance brought forth a noble deed." These young men deserve our gratitude, as all brave men who in so many ways and so many occasions are ready and will continue to be ready to give their life and their all to their native land….
Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our army with so many men, and the thankfulness of their loved ones, who passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster….
We are told that Hitler has plans for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, someone told him, "There are bitter weeds in England." There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned….
We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities but also against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are a great many people affected by the orders which we have made who are passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot, under the present circumstances, draw all the distinctions we should like to do. If parachute landings were attempted and fierce fighting attendant on them followed, those unfortunate people would be far better out of the way for their own sake as well as ours.
There is, however, another class for which I feel not the slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us powers to put down fifth column activities with a strong hand, and we shall use those powers subject to the supervision and correction of the House without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied, and more than satisfied, that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out.
Turning once again to the question of invasion, there has, I will observe, never been a period in all those long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In the days of Napoleon the same wind which might have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There is always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befouled the imaginations of many Continental tyrants.
Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a watchful, but at the same time steady, eye….
We shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, ride out the storm of war, outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty's government, every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and their need, will defend to the death their native soils, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength, even though a large tract 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 nor 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. And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the old.
Stalin Commands the Soviet Peoples to Scorch the Earth Being Taken by Hitler's Troops
"To the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway car, not a single pound of grain or a gallon of fuel."
Can an evil leader make a good speech? Of course; an example is Joseph Stalin's stirring broadcast on July 3, 1941, as German troops blitzed across lightly defended Soviet borders in an invasion that began on June 22.
Stalin had signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler in 1939, annexed the Baltic states in a Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, and invaded Finland. But his paranoid purges of the high command of the Red Army left his own forces poorly led, and—after Khrushchev's "secret speech" (p. 964)—dismantled the cult of personality and revealed Stalin's excesses—it became known that the dictator had been surprised and immobilized for days after the Nazi invasion.
He felt called upon to explain why he had signed a nonaggression treaty with the men he now called "fiends and cannibals," but after this diplomatic defensiveness, he turned to war. Ruthlessness against his own people was the order of the day: he castigated "whimperers and cowards" and equated rumormongers with enemy parachutists; few of his listeners doubted that what he called being "haled before a military tribunal" meant being summarily shot. Nevertheless, millions of Ukrainians welcomed Hitler's troops at first as liberators from Stalin's repression.
What the West heard, however, was his order that "grain and fuel which cannot be withdrawn must without fail be destroyed"; this was characterized as the "scorched-earth policy," a term first used in the Sino-Japanese war during the 1930s.
***
COMRADES! CITIZENS! BROTHERS and sisters! Men of our army and navy! I am addressing you, my friends!
The perfidious military attack on our fatherland, begun on June 22 by Hitler's Germany, is continuing.
In spite of heroic resistance of the Red Army, and although the enemy's finest divisions and finest air force units have already been smashed and have met their doom on the field of battle, the enemy continues to push forward, hurling fresh forces into the attack.
Hitler's troops have succeeded in capturing Lithuania, a considerable part of Latvia, the western part of Byelorussia, and a part of the western Ukraine.
The Fascist air force is extending the range of operations of its bombers and is bombing Murmansk, Orsha, Mogilev, Smolensk, Kiev, Odessa, and Sevastopol.
A grave danger hangs over our country.
How could it have happened that our glorious Red Army surrendered a number of our cities and districts to the Fascist armies?
Is it really true that German Fascist troops are invincible, as is ceaselessly trumpeted by boastful Fascist propagandists? Of course not!
History shows that there are no invincible armies, and never have been. Napoleon's army was considered invincible, but it was beaten successively by Russian, English, and German armies. Kaiser Wilhelm's German army in the period of the first imperialist war was also considered invincible, but it was beaten several times by Russian and Anglo-French forces, and was finally smashed by Anglo-French forces.
The same must be said of Hitler's German Fascist army today. This army has not yet met with serious resistance on the continent of Europe. Only on our territory has it met serious resistance, and if as a result of this resistance the finest divisions of Hitler's German Fascist army have been defeated by our Red Army, it means that this army, too, can be smashed and will be smashed as were the armies of Napoleon and Wilhelm.
As to part of our territory having nevertheless been seized by German Fascist troops, this is chiefly due to the fact that the war of Fascist Germany on the USSR began under conditions favorable for German forces and unfavorable for Soviet forces.
The fact of the matter is that troops of Germany, as a country at war, were already fully mobilized, and 170 divisions hurled by Germany against the USSR and brought up to the Soviet frontiers were in a state of complete readiness, only awaiting the signal to move into action, whereas Soviet troops had little time to effect mobilization and move up to the frontiers.
Of no little importance in this respect is the fact that Fascist Germany suddenly and treacherously violated the nonaggression pact she concluded in 1939 with the USSR, disregarding the fact that she would be regarded as an aggressor by the whole world. Naturally, our peace-loving country, not wishing to take the initiative of breaking the pact, could not resort to perfidy.
It may be asked, How could the Soviet Government have consented to conclude a nonaggression pact with such treacherous fiends as Hitler and Ribbentrop? Was not this an error on the part of the Soviet government? Of course not!
Nonaggression pacts are pacts of peace between two states. It was such a pact that Germany proposed to us in 1939. Could the Soviet government have declined such a proposal? I think that not a single peace-loving state could decline a peace treaty with a neighboring state even though the latter was headed by such fiends and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop….
What is required to put an end to the danger hovering over our country, and what measures must be taken to smash the enemy?
Above all, it is essential that our people, the Soviet people, should understand the full immensity of the danger that threatens our country and abandon all complacency, all heedlessness, all those moods of peaceful, constructive work which were so natural before the war but which are fatal today, when war has fundamentally changed everything.
The enemy is cruel and implacable. He is out to seize our lands watered with our sweat, to seize our grain and soil secured by our labor.
He is out to restore the rule of landlords, to restore czarism, to destroy national culture and the national state existence of Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Lithuanians, Letts, Estonians, Uzbeks, Tartars, Moldavians, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanians, and the other free peoples of the Soviet Union, to Germanize them, to convert them into slaves of German princes and barons.
Thus the issue is one of life or death for the Soviet state, for the peoples of the USSR: the issue is whether peoples of the Soviet Union shall remain free or fall into slavery.
The Soviet people must realize this and abandon all heedlessness; they must mobilize themselves and reorganize all their work on new, wartime lines, when there can be no mercy to the enemy.
Further, there must be no room in our ranks for whimperers and cowards, for panicmongers and deserters; our people must know no fear in the fight and must selflessly join our patriotic war of liberation, our war against the Fascist enslavers….
The peoples of the Soviet Union must rise against the enemy and defend their rights and their land. The Red Army, Red Navy, and all citizens of the Soviet Union must defend every inch of Soviet soil, must fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages, must display the daring initiative and intelligence that are inherent in our people.
We must organize all-round assistance to the Red Army, ensure powerful reinforcements for its ranks and supply of everything it requires; we must organize rapid transport of troops and military freight and extensive aid to the wounded.
We must strengthen the Red Army's rear, subordinating all our work to this cause; all our industries must be got to work with greater intensity to produce more rifles, machine guns, artillery, bullets, shells, airplanes; we must organize the guarding of factories, power stations, telephonic and telegraphic communications, and arrange effective air raid precautions in all localities.
We must wage a ruthless fight against all disorganizers of the rear, deserters, panicmongers, rumormongers, exterminate spies, diversionists, enemy parachutists, rendering rapid aid in all this to our destroyer battalions. We must bear in mind that the enemy is crafty, unscrupulous, experienced in deception and dissemination of false rumors.
We must reckon with all this and not fall victim to provocation. All who by their panicmongering and cowardice hinder the work of defense, no matter who they are, must be immediately haled before a military tribunal.
In case of a forced retreat of Red Army units, all rolling stock must be evacuated; to the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway car, not a single pound of grain or a gallon of fuel.
Collective farmers must drive off all their cattle and turn over their grain to the safekeeping of state authorities for transportation to the rear. All valuable property including nonferrous metals, grain, and fuel which cannot be withdrawn must without fail be destroyed.
In areas occupied by the enemy, guerrilla units, mounted and foot, must be formed; diversionist groups must be organized to combat enemy troops, to foment guerrilla warfare everywhere, to blow up bridges, roads, damage telephone and telegraph lines, and to set fire to forests, stores, and transports.
In occupied regions conditions must be made unbearable for the enemy and all his accomplices. They must be hounded and annihilated at every step and all their measures frustrated….
Comrades, our forces are numberless. The overweening enemy will soon learn this to his cost. Side by side with the Red Army and Navy thousands of workers, collective farmers, and intellectuals are rising to fight the enemy aggressor. The masses of our people will rise up in their millions. The working people of Moscow and Leningrad already have commenced to form vast popular levies in support of the Red Army.
Such popular levies must be raised in every city which is in danger of an enemy invasion; all working people must be roused to defend our freedom, our honor, our country—in our patriotic war against German fascism….
All our forces for the support of our heroic Red Army and our glorious Red Navy!
All the forces of the people—for the demolition of the enemy!
Forward, to our victory!
President Franklin D. Roosevelt Asks Congress to Declare War on Japan
"Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy…."
FDR drafted this brief, formal speech to the Congress himself, relying on his speechwriters at the time, Robert E. Sherwood and Samuel I. Rosenman, to work on a longer radio speech to the American people the following night. The use of a date to start, similar to Lincoln's Gettysburg reference to a number of years, showed solemn deference to the historic nature of the occasion. In Roosevelt's first draft, the opening line read, "…a date which will live in world history, the United States was simultaneously and deliberately attacked"; he crossed out "world history" and inserted the less familiar but much stronger "infamy" and crossed out "simultaneously" to substitute "suddenly," again a stronger word. His adviser Harry Hopkins suggested the addition of some reference to the Deity (as Salmon Chase suggested to Lincoln, reviewing a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation), and FDR inserted the sentence "So help us God."
The salutation contains an error. The vice-president of the United States, when he sits in the Senate as its president, is properly addressed by the president of the United States as "Mr. President," not as "Mr. Vice President." And grammarians would prefer "a date that will live in infamy," but it was a tense moment in a busy time.
***
MR. VICE-PRESIDENT, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our secretary of state a formal reply to a recent American message. And, while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has therefore undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As commander in chief of the army and navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense, that always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
General Montgomery Takes Command and Draws the Line at El Alamein
"Here we will stand and fight; there will be no further withdrawal…. If we can't stay here alive, then let us stay here dead."
The British Eighth Army, whose troops called themselves "the Desert Rats," were being driven out of North Africa in the summer of 1942 by the German forces under the inspired command of General Erwin Rommel. The British troops were dispirited; the officers demoralized; the defensive war was being lost.
On August 13, 1942, the new commander, Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery—"Monty" he was called—gathered his officer corps in Cairo, pointed to a place on the map and stated, "The defense of Egypt lies here at Alamein…." The general was sure of himself; he spoke in declarative sentences; he used "I" frequently. "I don't want any doubters in this party." The purpose of the speech was to instill confidence, and he made his point by pointing to it: "The great point to remember is that we are going to finish with this chap Rommel once and for all."
The staccato style and supremely confident tone of this speech could be emulated by any newly appointed CEO hired to turn around a failing company. It is bombastic, arrogant, but not profane. In this last his oratory differed from that of American Lieutenant General George S. Patton, who would exhort his soldiers in this way: "You can thank God," said "Old Blood and Guts," "that twenty years from now when you're sitting by the fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you what you did in the war, you won't have to shift him to the other knee, cough, and say, 'I shoveled shit in Louisiana.'"
The Montgomery style, in both military tactics and rhetoric, was less earthy and more carefully prepared than Patton's. He uses slang: in promising "to hit Rommel and his army for six," he employed a Briticism for "to vanquish."
At El Alamein, Monty launched his counteroffensive after pounding the enemy with the heaviest artillery barrage in military history; his victory was one of the turning points of World War II. Two years later, in a message to his troops before the Allied invasion in Normandy, he expressed himself in a sentence with Churchillian sweep: "To us is given the honor of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history, and in the better days that lie ahead men will speak with pride of our doings."
***
I WANT FIRST of all to introduce myself to you. You do not know me. I do not know you. But we have got to work together; therefore we must understand each other, and we must have confidence each in the other. I have only been here a few hours. But from what I have seen and heard since I arrived I am prepared to say, here and now, that I have confidence in you. We will then work together as a team; and together we will gain the confidence of this great army and go forward to final victory in Africa.
I believe that one of the first duties of a commander is to create what I call "atmosphere," and in that atmosphere his staff, subordinate commanders, and troops will live and work and fight.
I do not like the general atmosphere I find here. It is an atmosphere of doubt, of looking back to select the next place to which to withdraw, of loss of confidence in our ability to defeat Rommel, of desperate defense measures by reserves in preparing positions in Cairo and the Delta.
All that must cease.
Let us have a new atmosphere.
The defense of Egypt lies here at Alamein and on the Ruweisat Ridge. What is the use of digging trenches in the Delta? It is quite useless; if we lose this position we lose Egypt; all the fighting troops now in the Delta must come here at once, and will. Here we will stand and fight; there will be no further withdrawal. I have ordered that all plans and instructions dealing with further withdrawal are to be burned, and at once. We will stand and fight here.
If we can't stay here alive, then let us stay here dead.
I want to impress on everyone that the bad times are over. Fresh divisions from the UK are now arriving in Egypt, together with ample reinforcements for our present divisions. We have three hundred to four hundred new Sherman tanks coming and these are actually being unloaded at Suez now. Our mandate from the prime minister is to destroy the Axis forces in North Africa; I have seen it, written on half a sheet of notepaper. And it will be done. If anyone here thinks it can't be done, let him go at once; I don't want any doubters in this party. It can be done, and it will be done: beyond any possibility of doubt.
Now I understand that Rommel is expected to attack at any moment. Excellent. Let him attack.
I would sooner it didn't come for a week, just give me time to sort things out. If we have two weeks to prepare we will be sitting pretty; Rommel can attack as soon as he likes after that, and I hope he does.
Meanwhile, we ourselves will start to plan a great offensive; it will be the beginning of a campaign which will hit Rommel and his army for six right out of Africa.
But first we must create a reserve corps, mobile and strong in armor, which we will train out of the line. Rommel has always had such a force in his Africa Corps, which is never used to hold the line but which is always in reserve, available for striking blows. Therein has been his great strength. We will create such a corps ourselves, a British Panzer Corps; it will consist of two armored divisions and one motorized division; I gave orders yesterday for it to begin to form, back in the Delta.
I have no intention of launching our great attack until we are completely ready; there will be pressure from many quarters to attack soon; I will not attack until we are ready, and you can rest assured on that point.
Meanwhile, if Rommel attacks while we are preparing, let him do so with pleasure; we will merely continue with our own preparations and we will attack when we are ready, and not before.
I want to tell you that I always work on the Chief of Staff system. I have nominated Brigadier de Guingand as Chief of Staff Eighth Army. I will issue orders through him. Whatever he says will be taken as coming from me and will be acted on at once. I understand there has been a great deal of "bellyaching" out here. By bellyaching I mean inventing poor reasons for not doing what one has been told to do.
All this is to stop at once.
I will tolerate no bellyaching.
If anyone objects to doing what he is told, then he can get out of it: and at once. I want that made very clear right down through the Eighth Army.
I have little more to say just at present. And some of you may think it is quite enough and may wonder if I am mad.
I assure you I am quite sane.
I understand there are people who often think I am slightly mad; so often that I now regard it as rather a compliment.
All I have to say to that is that if I am slightly mad, there are a large number of people I could name who are raving lunatics!
What I have done is to get over to you the "atmosphere" in which we will now work and fight; you must see that that atmosphere permeates right through the Eighth Army to the most junior private soldier. All the soldiers must know what is wanted; when they see it coming to pass there will be a surge of confidence throughout the army.
I ask you to give me your confidence and to have faith that what I have said will come to pass.
There is much work to be done.
The orders I have given about no further withdrawal will mean a complete change in the layout of our dispositions; also, we must begin to prepare for our great offensive.
The first thing to do is to move our HQ to a decent place where we can live in reasonable comfort and where the army staff can all be together and side by side with the HQ of the Desert Air Force. This is a frightful place here, depressing, unhealthy, and a rendezvous for every fly in Africa; we shall do no good work here. Let us get over there by the sea where it is fresh and healthy. If officers are to do good work they must have decent messes, and be comfortable. So off we go on the new line.
The Chief of Staff will be issuing orders on many points very shortly, and I am always available to be consulted by the senior officers of the staff. The great point to remember is that we are going to finish with this chap Rommel once and for all. It will be quite easy. There is no doubt about it.
He is definitely a nuisance. Therefore we will hit him a crack and finish with him.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Acts to Defend the Falkland Islands
"Let us, then, draw together in the name, not of jingoism, but of justice."
Britain's first female Prime Minister, and the person who served longest (1979–90) in 10 Downing Street in the twentieth century, Margaret Thatcher made her mark as an unswerving conservative ("This lady's not for turning," she said, in a play on "The lady's not for burning") and as an unapologetic nationalist. Asked to select her three most memorable speeches, she chose a 1988 speech in Bruges setting out her views on the European community; a 1984 speech to a Conservative party conference at Brighton following an IRA bomb attack; and a speech on May 26, 1982, to a Conservative Women's conference in the early stages of the campaign to liberate the Falkland Islands after their invasion by Argentina, which long called them the Malvinas and considered them Argentine. That Falklands speech is the one reprinted almost in its entirety here because it best reflects the Thatcher style: modified Churchillian, resolute but not ringing, stubborn but sensible. Her concluding words are based on the final lines of Shakespeare's King John.
***
…IN A SERIES of measured and progressive steps, over the past weeks, our forces have tightened their grip of the Falkland Islands. They have retaken South Georgia. Gradually they have denied fresh supplies to the Argentine garrison.
Finally, by the successful amphibious landing at San Carlos Bay in the early hours of Friday morning, they have placed themselves in a position to retake the islands and reverse the illegal Argentine invasion.
By the skill of our pilots, our sailors, and those manning the Rapier missile batteries onshore, they have inflicted heavy losses on the Argentine air force—over fifty fixed-wing aircraft have been destroyed.
There have, of course, been tragic losses. You will have heard of the further attacks on our task force. HMS Coventry came under repeated air attack yesterday evening and later sank. One of our merchant marine ships, the Atlantic Conveyor, supporting the task force, was also damaged and had to be abandoned. We do not yet know the number of casualties, but our hearts go out to all those who had men in these ships.
Despite these grievous losses, our resolve is not weakened….
It was eight weeks ago today that information reached us that the Argentine fleet was sailing towards the Falklands.
Eight thousand miles away…. At that stage there were only two ways of trying to stop it—through President Reagan, whose appeal to Argentina was rebuffed, and the United Nations, whose plea was also rejected.
There were those who said we should have accepted the Argentine invasion as a fait accompli. But whenever the rule of force as distinct from the rule of law is seen to succeed, the world moves a step closer to anarchy.
The older generation in this country and generations before them have made sacrifices so that we could be a free society and belong to a community of nations which seeks to resolve disputes by civilized means.
Today it falls to us to bear the same responsibility.
What has happened since that day, eight weeks ago, is a matter of history—the history of a nation which rose instinctively to the needs of the occasion.
For decades, the peoples of those islands had enjoyed peace—with freedom, with justice, with democracy.
That peace was shattered by a wanton act of armed aggression by Argentina in blatant violation of international law. And everything that has happened since has stemmed from that invasion by the military dictatorship of Argentina.
We want that peace restored. But we want it with the same freedom, justice, and democracy that the islanders previously enjoyed.
For seven weeks we sought a peaceful solution by diplomatic means—through the good offices of our close friend and ally the United States; through the unremitting efforts of the secretary-general of the United Nations…. We worked tirelessly for a peaceful solution. But when there is no response of substance from the other side, there comes a point when it is no longer possible to trust the good faith of those with whom one is negotiating.
Playing for time is not working for a peaceful solution. Wasting time is not willing a peaceful solution. It is simply leaving the aggressor with the fruits of his aggression.
It would be a betrayal of our fighting men and of the islanders if we continued merely to talk, when talk alone was getting nowhere.
And so, seven weeks to the day after the invasion, we moved to recover by force what was taken from us by force. It cannot be said too often: we are the victims; they are the aggressors.
As always, we came to military action reluctantly.
But when territory which has been British for almost 150 years is seized and occupied; when not only British land but British citizens are in the power of an aggressor—then we have to restore our rights and the rights of the Falkland Islanders.
There have been a handful of questioning voices raised here at home. I would like to answer them. It has been suggested that the size of the Falkland Islands and the comparatively small number of its inhabitants—some eighteen hundred men, women, and children—should somehow affect our reaction to what has happened to them.
To those—not many—who speak lightly of a few islanders beyond the seas and who ask the question "Are they worth fighting for?" let me say this: right and wrong are not measured by a head count of those to whom that wrong has been done. That would not be principle but expediency.
And the Falklanders, remember, are not strangers. They are our own people. As the prime minister of New Zealand, Bob Muldoon, put it in his usual straightforward way, "With the Falkland Islanders, it is family."
When their land was invaded and their homes were overrun, they naturally turned to us for help, and we, their fellow citizens, eight thousand miles away in our much larger island, could not and did not beg to be excused.
We sent our men and our ships with all speed, hoping against hope that we would not have to use them in battle but prepared to do so if all attempts at a peaceful solution failed. When those attempts failed, we could not sail by on the other side.
And let me add this. If we, the British, were to shrug our shoulders at what has happened in the South Atlantic and acquiesce in the illegal seizure of those faraway islands, it would be a clear signal to those with similar designs on the territory of others to follow in the footsteps of aggression.
Surely we, of all people, have learned the lesson of history: that to appease an aggressor is to invite aggression elsewhere, and on an ever-increasing scale.
Other voices—again only a few—have accused us of clinging to colonialism or even imperialism. Let me remind those who advance that argument that the British have a record second to none of leading colony after colony to freedom and independence. We cling not to colonialism but self-determination.
Still others—again only a few—say we must not put at risk our investments and interests in Latin America; that trade and commerce are too important to us to put in jeopardy some of the valuable markets of the world.
But what would the islanders, under the heel of the invader, say to that?
What kind of people would we be if, enjoying the birthright of freedom ourselves, we abandoned British citizens for the sake of commercial gain?
Now we are present in strength on the Falkland Islands.
Our purpose is to repossess them. We shall carry on until that purpose is accomplished.
When the invader has left, there will be much to do—rebuilding, restoring homes and farms, and, above all, renewing the confidence of the people in their future.
Their wishes will need time to crystallize and, of course, will depend in some measure on what we and others are prepared to do to develop the untapped resources and safeguard the islands' future.
Madam Chairman, our cause is just.
It is the cause of freedom and the rule of law.
It is the cause of support for the weak against aggression by the strong. Let us, then, draw together in the name, not of jingoism, but of justice.
And let our nation, as it has so often in the past, remind itself—and the world:
Nought shall make us rue,
If England to herself do rest but true.
Israel's Yitzhak Rabin Shakes Hands with His Lifelong Enemy
"We who have fought against you, the Palestinians—we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough!"
The lawn of the White House in Washington was the scene of the signing of a peace agreement, secretly negotiated in Oslo, between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. President Bill Clinton introduced Prime Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat with a biblical allusion: "We must realize the prophecy of Isaiah, that the cry of violence shall no more be heard in your land, nor wrack nor ruin within your borders."
Rabin made a momentary show of reluctance to shake the former terrorist's hand, then did so. The former general's short speech, drafted by his veteran spokesman Eitan Haber, hewed to the style of a plain soldier. The audience on the lawn, including this anthologist, noted the strength modified by pain in the delivery. Rabin spoke directly to his former enemies, addressing them not as "Palestinian Arabs" but giving them the status of a people: "Let me say to you, the Palestinians…" He was also speaking to his own people, many of whom were ambivalent about or opposed to the ultimate direction of the "peace process." As a soldier turned peacemaker, he evoked the Book of Ecclesiastes 3:1–8 to dramatize the reason for his new direction: "To everything there is a season… A time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace."
Especially powerful to the Jews listening to him on the lawn and around the world on September 13, 1993, was his conclusion, spoken in Hebrew. What he described as "words taken from the prayer recited by Jews daily" were from the Kaddish, which are also spoken in a Mourners' Kaddish at graveside and repeated by the bereaved in remembrance of the dead. The prayer makes no mention of death; rather, it affirms faith in God even in the midst of death. As the speaker buried the past, his choice of Hebrew words remembered its bloodshed.
After Prime Minister Rabin's assassination by an Israeli fanatic two years after this speech, the memory of that prayer was especially poignant, and all television obituaries included his exhortation "Enough!"
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PRESIDENT OF THE United States, your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen: This signing of the Israeli-Palestinian declaration of principle here today—it's not so easy—neither for myself as a soldier in Israel's war nor for the people of Israel, not to the Jewish people in the diaspora, who are watching us now with great hope mixed with apprehension. It is certainly not easy for the families of the victims of the war's violence, terror, whose pain will never heal, for the many thousands who defended our lives in their own and have even sacrificed their lives for our own. For them this ceremony has come too late.
Today on the eve of an opportunity, opportunity for peace and perhaps end of violence and war, we remember each and every one of them with everlasting love. We have come from Jerusalem, the ancient and eternal capital of the Jewish people. We have come from an anguished and grieving land. We have come from a people, a home, a family that has not known a single year, not a single month, in which mothers have not wept for their sons. We have come to try and put an end to the hostilities so that our children, our children's children, will no longer experience the painful cost of war: violence and terror. We have come to secure their lives and to ease the soul and the painful memories of the past—to hope and pray for peace.
Let me say to you, the Palestinians, we are destined to live together on the same soil in the same land. We, the soldiers who have returned from battles stained with blood; we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes; we who have attended their funerals and cannot look in the eyes of their parents; we who have come from a land where parents bury their children; we who have fought against you, the Palestinians—we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough!
We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people—people who want to build a home. To plant a tree. To love—live side by side with you. In dignity. In empathy. As human beings. As free men. We are today giving peace a chance—and saying to you and saying again to you: enough. Let us pray that a day will come when we all will say farewell to the arms. We wish to open a new chapter in the sad book of our lives together—a chapter of mutual recognition, of good neighborliness, of mutual respect, of understanding. We hope to embark on a new era in the history of the Middle East. Today here in Washington at the White House, we will begin a new reckoning in the relations between peoples, between parents tired of war, between children who will not know war.
President of the United States, ladies and gentlemen, our inner strength, our high moral values, have been the right for thousands of years, from the book of the books. In one of which, we read: "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die… a time to kill and a time to heal… a time to weep and a time to laugh… a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace." Ladies and gentlemen, the time for peace has come.
In two days the Jewish people will celebrate the beginning of a new year. I believe, I hope, I pray that the new year will bring a message of redemption for all peoples—a good year for you, for all of you; a good year for Israelis and Palestinians; a good year for all the peoples of the Middle East; a good year for our American friends who so want peace and are helping to achieve it.
For presidents and members of previous administrations, especially for you, President Clinton, and your staff, for all citizens of the world, may peace come to all your homes. In the Jewish tradition it is customary to conclude our prayers with the word Amen. With your permission, men of peace, I shall conclude with the words taken from the prayer recited by Jews daily, and whoever of you who volunteer, I would ask the entire audience to join me in saying Amen. [Speaking in Hebrew.] May He who brings peace to His universe bring peace to us and to all Israel. Amen.