June 4, 1940.
House of Commons
From the moment
that the French defenses at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the
end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the
south could have saved the British and French Armies who had entered
Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact was
not immediately realized. The French High Command hoped they would be
able to close the gap, and the Armies of the north were under their
orders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost
certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian Army of over 20 divisions
and the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force
and scope of the German penetration were realized and when a new French
Generalissimo, General Weygand, assumed command in place of General
Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in Belgium
to keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own
right hand to a newly created French Army which was to have advanced
across the Somme in great strength to grasp it.
However, the
German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of
the Armies of the north. Eight or nine armored divisions, each of about
four hundred armored vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted
to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut
off all communications between us and the main French Armies. It severed
our own communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to
Amiens and afterwards through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the
coast to Boulogne and Calais, and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armored
and mechanized onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries,
and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute
mass of the ordinary German Army and German people, always so ready to
be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts
which they have never known in their own.
I have said this
armored scythe-stroke almost reached Dunkirk-almost but not quite.
Boulogne and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The Guards
defended Boulogne for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from
this country. The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen
Victoria's Rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and 1,000
Frenchmen, in all about four thousand strong, defended Calais to the
last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned
the offer, and four days of intense street fighting passed before
silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable
resistance. Only 30 unwounded survivors were brought off by the Navy,
and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however,
was not in vain. At least two armored divisions, which otherwise would
have been turned against the British Expeditionary Force, had to be sent
to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories of the
light divisions, and the time gained enabled the Graveline water lines
to be flooded and to be held by the French troops.
Thus it was
that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible for
the Armies of the north to reopen their communications to Amiens with
the main French Armies, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed,
forlorn. The Belgian, British and French Armies were almost surrounded.
Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighboring
beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far
outnumbered in the air.
When, a week ago today, I asked the House
to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I feared it
would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our
long history. I thought-and some good judges agreed with me-that perhaps
20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that
the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British
Expeditionary Force north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up
in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and
ammunition. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called
upon the House and the 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 about to perish upon the field or to
be led into an ignominious and starving captivity.
That was the
prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final
was yet to fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us to
come to his aid. Had not this Ruler and his Government severed
themselves from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in
the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a
fatal neutrality, the French and British Armies might well at the
outset have saved not only Belgium but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the
last moment, when Belgium was already invaded, King Leopold called upon
us to come to his aid, and even at the last moment we came. He and his
brave, efficient Army, nearly half a million strong, guarded our left
flank and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly,
without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the
advice of his Ministers and upon his own personal act, he sent a
plenipotentiary to the German Command, surrendered his Army, and exposed
our whole flank and means of retreat.
I asked the House a week
ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were not clear, but I do
not feel that any reason now exists why we should not form our own
opinions upon this pitiful episode. The surrender of the Belgian Army
compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea
more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off,
and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned
the finest Army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in
exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map
will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three
corps forming the First French Army, who were still farther from the
coast than we were, and it seemed impossible that any large number of
Allied troops could reach the coast.
The enemy attacked on all
sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the
power of their far more numerous Air Force, was thrown into the battle
or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in upon the
narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began to
fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could
approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas;
they sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than a
hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single
pier that remained, and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had
their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk, and their
motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For
four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armored
divisions-or what Was left of them-together with great masses of
infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the
ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and
French Armies fought.
Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, with the willing
help of countless merchant seamen, strained every nerve to embark the
British and Allied troops; 220 light warships and 650 other vessels were
engaged. They had to operate upon the difficult coast, often in adverse
weather, under an almost ceaseless hail of bombs and an increasing
concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas, as I have said,
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 on end, making trip after trip across the dangerous waters,
bringing with them always men whom they had rescued. The numbers they
have brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage.
The hospital ships, which brought off many thousands of British and
French wounded, being so plainly marked were a special target for Nazi
bombs; but the men and women on board 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, from home bases, now used part of its
main metropolitan fighter strength, and struck at the German bombers and
at the fighters which in large numbers protected them. This struggle
was protracted and fierce. Suddenly the scene has cleared, the crash and
thunder has for the moment-but only for the moment-died away. A miracle
of deliverance, achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect
discipline, by faultless service, by resource, by skill, by
unconquerable fidelity, is manifest to us all. The enemy was hurled back
by the retreating British and French troops. He was so roughly handled
that he did not hurry their departure seriously. The Royal Air Force
engaged the main strength of the German Air Force, and inflicted upon
them losses 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, out of
the jaws of death and shame, to their native land and to the tasks
which lie immediately ahead. We must be very careful not to assign to
this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by
evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance, which
should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force. Many of our soldiers
coming back have not seen the Air Force at work; they saw only the
bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrate its
achievements. I have heard much talk of this; that is why I go out of my
way to say this. I will tell you about it.
This was a great
trial of strength between the British and German Air Forces. Can you
conceive a greater objective for the Germans in the air than to make
evacuation from these beaches impossible, and to sink all these ships
which were displayed, almost to the extent of thousands? Could there
have been an objective of greater military importance and significance
for the whole purpose of the war than this? They tried hard, and they
were beaten back; they were frustrated in their task. We got the Army
away; and they have paid fourfold for any losses which they have
inflicted. Very large formations of German aeroplanes-and we know that
they are a very brave race-have turned on several occasions from the
attack of one-quarter of their number of the Royal Air Force, and have
dispersed in different directions. Twelve aeroplanes have been hunted by
two. One aeroplane was driven into the water and cast away by the mere
charge of a British aeroplane, which had no more ammunition. All of our
types-the Hurricane, the Spitfire and the new Defiant-and all our pilots
have been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face.
When
we consider how much greater would be our advantage in defending the
air above this Island against an overseas attack, I must say that I find
in these facts a sure basis upon which practical and reassuring
thoughts may rest. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The
great French Army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and
disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it
not also 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 world, in all the history of war, such an
opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders,
all fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these young
men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we
stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and
shattering power, of whom it may be said that
Every morn brought forth a noble chance
And every chance brought forth a noble knight,
deserve
our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so
many occasions, are ready, and continue ready to give life and all for
their native land.
I return to the Army. In the long series of
very fierce battles, now on this front, now on that, fighting on three
fronts at once, battles fought by two or three divisions against an
equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on
some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so well-in these battles
our losses in men have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded and missing. I
take occasion to express the sympathy of the House to all who have
suffered bereavement or who are still anxious. The President of the
Board of Trade [Sir Andrew Duncan] is not here today. His son has been
killed, and many in the House have felt the pangs of affliction in the
sharpest form. But I will say this about the missing: We have had a
large number of wounded come home safely to this country, but I would
say about the missing that there may be very many reported missing who
will come back home, some day, in one way or another. In the confusion
of this fight it is inevitable that many have been left in positions
where honor required no further resistance from them.
Against
this loss of over 30,000 men, we can set a far heavier loss certainly
inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We
have perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost in the opening days of
the battle of 21st March, 1918, but we have lost nearly as many guns --
nearly one thousand-and all our transport, all the armored vehicles that
were with the Army in the north. This loss will impose a further delay
on the expansion of our military strength. That expansion had not been
proceeding as far as we had hoped. The best of all we had to give had
gone to the British Expeditionary Force, and although they had not the
numbers of tanks and some articles of equipment which were desirable,
they were a very well and finely equipped Army. They had the
first-fruits of all that our industry had to give, and that is gone. And
now here is this further delay. How long it will be, how long it will
last, depends upon the exertions which we make in this Island. An effort
the like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made.
Work is proceeding everywhere, night and day, Sundays and week days.
Capital and Labor have cast aside their interests, rights, and customs
and put them into the common stock. Already the flow of munitions has
leaped forward. There is no reason why we should not in a few months
overtake the sudden and serious loss that has come upon us, without
retarding the development of our general program.
Nevertheless,
our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved
ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the
fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military
disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army has been
lost, a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had
been reposed is gone, many valuable mining districts and factories have
passed into the enemy's possession, the whole of the Channel ports are
in his hands, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that,
and we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or
at France. We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan 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,
he was told by someone. "There are bitter weeds in England." There are
certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary
Force returned.
The whole question of home defense against
invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for
the time being in this Island incomparably more powerful military
forces than we have ever had at any moment in this war or the last. But
this will not continue. We shall not be content with a defensive war. We
have our duty to our Ally. We have to reconstitute and build up the
British Expeditionary Force once again, under its gallant
Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort. All this is in train; but in the interval
we must put our defenses in this Island into such a high state of
organization that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give
effective security and that the largest possible potential of offensive
effort may be realized. On this we are now engaged. It will be very
convenient, if it be the desire of the House, to enter upon this subject
in a secret Session. Not that the government would necessarily be able
to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we like to have our
discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they
will be read the next day by the enemy; and the Government would benefit
by views freely expressed in all parts of the House by Members with
their knowledge of so many different parts of the country. I understand
that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily
acceded to by His Majesty's Government.
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 the
passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we
cannot, at the present time and under the present stress, draw all the
distinctions which we should like to do. If parachute landings were
attempted and fierce fighting attendant upon them followed, these
unfortunate people would be far better out of the way, for their own
sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class, for which I
feel not the slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us the 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, and this time more generally, to
the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a
period in all these 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
would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven
away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that
chance which has excited and befooled 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 that no idea is so
outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching,
but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget
the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if
it can be locally exercised.
I have, myself, full confidence
that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best
arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves
once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war,
and to 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 in their need, will
defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good
comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts 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 or 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, would carry on the struggle, until, in
God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps
forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
October 29, 1941.
Harrow School
Almost
a year has passed since I came down here at your Head Master's kind
invitation in order to cheer myself and cheer the hearts of a few of my
friends by singing some of our own songs. The ten months that have
passed have seen very terrible catastrophic events in the world - ups
and downs, misfortunes - but can anyone sitting here this afternoon,
this October afternoon, not feel deeply thankful for what has happened
in the time that has passed and for the very great improvement in the
position of our country and of our home? Why, when I was here last time
we were quite alone, desperately alone, and we had been so for five or
six months. We were poorly armed. We are not so poorly armed today; but
then we were very poorly armed. We had the unmeasured menace of the
enemy and their air attack still beating upon us, and you yourselves had
had experience of this attack; and I expect you are beginning to feel
impatient that there has been this long lull with nothing particular
turning up!
But we must learn to be equally good at what is
short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that
the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move
from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will
bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up
their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and
finished, then, even if it takes months - if it takes years - they do
it.
Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing our minds
back to our meeting here ten months ago and now, is that appearances are
often very deceptive, and as Kipling well says, we must "…meet with
Triumph and Disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same."
You
cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination
makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not
much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers
than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they
must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this
far-reaching imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone
through in this period - I am addressing myself to the School - surely
from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never
give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty -
never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never
yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the
enemy. We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed
that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of
ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this
country, were gone and finished and liquidated.
Very different is
the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge
across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no
flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a
miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never
doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can
be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.
You sang here a
verse of a School Song: you sang that extra verse written in my honour,
which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated
today. But there is one word in it I want to alter - I wanted to do so
last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: "Not less we praise
in darker days."
I have obtained the Head Master's permission to alter darker to sterner. "Not less we praise in sterner days."
Do
not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days.
These are not dark days; these are great days - the greatest days our
country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been
allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making
these days memorable in the history of our race.
