What Is Our Policy?

Survival

The period between the First and Second World War in the UK has been dubbed the "Twilight Years"  by celebrated historians.  The country was awash with communist and latterly national socialist sympathisers, with pacifists, with Fabian socialists, with academics entranced by Freudianism, and with eugenicists.  [See Richard Overy,  The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars (New York: Penguin/Viking, 2009)]

The pacifist sentiment was largely represented politically via the Labour and Liberal parties.  But not exclusively so.  Neville Chamberlain, the architect of the foreign policy of appeasement towards Hitler, professed to be a pacifist.  He led the Conservative Party.  But despite the grip of these strange philosophies and teachings, when it finally became clear to the wilfully obtuse that Herr Hitler was an aggressor and had an ambition to rule Britain by force, the nation and its intellectuals and false prophets came together as one.

When Chamberlain realised that Hitler had deliberately deceived and lied to him, he became resolute in leading the nation in war.  But he was unable to win the universal support of the House of Commons.  Eventually, Winston Churchill was asked to lead a coalition government representing all parties in the House.  Repentant pacifists stood to indicate their support.  All parties laid aside politicking and began to pull together in harness to defend the nation.

Winston Churchill describes the moment:

On Monday, May 13 (1940), I asked the House of Commons, which had been specially summoned, for a vote of confidence in the new Administration.  After reporting the progress which had been made in filling the various offices, I said: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.  In all our long history no Prime Minister had ever been able to present to Parliament and the nation a programme at once so short and so popular.  I ended:

You ask, What is our policy?  I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us us: to wage against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.  That is our policy.  You ask, What is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory--victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there in no survival.  Let that be realised: no survival for the British Empire; no survival for all the the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward to its goal.  But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope.  I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men.  At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, "Come, then, let us go forward together with our united strength."

Upon these simple issues the House voted unanimously, and adjourned till May 21. [Winston Churchill, The Second World War [London: The Reprint Society, 1951].  Volume II: Their Finest Hour,   p. 36f.]

Churchill, of course, was unceremoniously rejected by the people at the end of the war, which had determined to return to the old politicking along ideological lines.  But he continues to be an exemplar of the maxim, "cometh the hour, cometh the man".  But in addition, there have been few times in Western history when an entire nation (with few exceptions) rose man, woman, and child to stand with their Prime Minister--despite the many defeats, setbacks, and terrible suffering.  Doubtless the sentiments of the speech above--repeated many times in different forums, played their part in forging the resolution of the people.

Sadly, Britain won the war but lost the peace.  It resumed its slow shuffling march on a long decline to what will be its eventual fall.  Today, let us mark, a Christian preacher in Britain, standing on a street corner preaching the Gospel, risks arrest for the "crime of hate speech".  Meanwhile, police turn a blind eye to the rape of young girls on an organised, industrial scale, for fear of breaching political correctness.  Churchill would have thought himself to be in a foreign land. 

Hitler may have lost the war, but arguably it will transpire he won the peace.  There are more ways that war to subdue and conquer a nation.