Never Give In! (16 page)

There can be no justification for retaining great masses of troops in this country either in divisional formations or as coast watchers. A reasonable provision must be made for a mobile and central force – that is a matter, of course, entirely for the Executive – but for the rest, cannot the Volunteers be made to play their part in subsidiary duties, and release men of military age wherever they may be found for the purpose of supplementing the fighting battalions?

To sum up, I submit to the Government, which has absolute power in all these matters – for after all the House of Commons has very little power and can only place matters before the Administration – that with a proper use of our resources in manpower it would be possible immediately to raise all fighting units to full strength. It would be possible in a few months to raise all infantry battalions in the field to 1,200 strong, thus adding at a stroke 40 per cent or 50 per cent to the rifle strength, and at the same time it would be possible to arrange for a regular system of rotation – I do not say a universal system, but a regular instituted system of rotation by which every young man so far as possible took his share with the fighting battalion and every worn-out soldier had a turn of rest. Next year it would be possible with a proper use of our resources – if the military situation renders it necessary, and if you look far enough ahead and act in time – to increase the scale of our military operations and either to add an extra infantry brigade to each division, or to embark upon that greater task which we must not exclude from the possibility of practical politics of raising the total number of divisions from seventy to the ideal at which we should aim of a hundred. We cannot survey the field of war today without profound realisation of the magnitude of the task before us. The continuing power of the enemy, which I mentioned on another occasion, on every front is proved to us by every telegram that comes in. We feel ourselves grappling with the most terrible foe that ever menaced freedom. Our whole life energies are required. We are trying our best, but are we at present developing the full results of the great effort made by the nation? I cannot think so. . . . No one who subjects the present organisation of the Army, either in the field or at home, to searching and dispassionate scrutiny can believe that every measure to that end is being taken at the present time.

‘PERILS, SORROWS AND SUFFERINGS WE HAVE NOT DESERVED’

10 December 1917

Corn Exchange, Bedford

The year 1917 was the grimmest of the Great War. The morale of the French Army was damaged by the failure of the Nivelle offensive and the British Army’s attack at Passchendaele had become bogged down in mud and barbed wire. On the Eastern front, the great Russian Army had collapsed, undermined by the Communist October Revolution. The only bright prospect was the entry into the war of the United States.

Two months ago 1 stated in London that the war was entering upon its sternest phase, but I must admit that the situation at this moment is more serious than it was reasonable two months ago to expect. The country is in danger. It is in danger as it has not been since the Battle of the Marne saved Paris and the Battle of Ypres and of the Yser saved the Channel ports. The cause of the Allies is now in danger. The future of the British Empire and of democracy and of civilisation hangs and will continue to hang for a considerable period in a balance and an anxious suspense.

It is impossible, even if it were desirable, to conceal these facts from our enemies. It would be folly not to face them boldly ourselves. Indeed, I am inclined to think that most people in this country, in this wonderful island, are already facing squarely and resolutely the facts of the situation. We read in the newspapers and in some speeches which are delivered of appeals to the Government to tell the truth about the war, to tell the truth about our war aims, but as a matter of fact the great bulk of the British people have got a very clear idea of how we stand and a still clearer idea of what we are aiming at. (
Hear, hear.
)

Anyone can see for himself what has happened in Russia. Russia has been thoroughly beaten by the Germans. Her great heart has been broken not only by German might but by German intrigue, not only by German steel but by German gold. Russia has fallen on the ground prostrate, in exhaustion and in agony. No one can tell what fearful vicissitudes will come to Russia or how or when she will arise, but arise she will. (
Cheers.
)

It is this melancholy event which has prolonged the war, that has robbed the French and the British and the Italian armies of the prize that was perhaps almost within their reach this summer. It is this event, and this event alone, that has exposed us to the perils and sorrows and sufferings which we have not deserved, which we cannot avoid, but under which we shall not bend. . . .

Our people are war-hardened and not war-weary. We have all the means of doing our part in bringing about victory. (
Cheers.
) But there is something much greater than all this. If Russia has, for the time being, fallen out of our ranks, the United States of America have entered them. (
Cheers.
) The great Republic of the West, more than a hundred millions, of the most educated and scientific democracy in the world are coming to our aid, marching along all the roads of America, steering across the ocean, organising their industries for war, spending their wealth like water, developing slowly but irresistibly and unceasingly the most gigantic, elemental forces ever yet owned and applied to the triumph of a righteous cause. The appearance of this mighty champion at the other end of the world has restored to us the fortunes of the war, and has repaired and more than repaired all that we have suffered in the loss of Russia. (
Cheers.
)

The intervention of America means the uniting of practically the whole world, and the whole of its resources against the German Power. It cannot fail in the end to be decisive. (
Cheers.
) It will secure us victory.

‘THE WAR IS WON!’

16 December 1918

Australia and New Zealand Luncheon Club,
Connaught Rooms, London

Just five weeks earlier, on 11 November 1918, the greatest war in the history of the world had come to an end. Churchill thanks the loyal Dominions of the Commonwealth and Empire, from Canada to India, South Africa to Australia and New Zealand, each one of which without being asked, had rallied to the defence of the Motherland. Here he salutes the ‘Anzacs’, the Australia/New Zealand Army Corps.

The war is won. (
Cheers.
) All our dreams have come true. We have reached the end of the long, long trail. And what a victory! I do not know what your feelings are, but I can tell you for myself that in the five weeks which have passed since firing stopped on the Western front I have felt a new and fresh inward satisfaction every day in contemplating the magnitude and the splendour of our achievement and our success. (
Cheers.
) It grows upon one like a living fire burning within. It fills our hearts with pride and with thankfulness that we have lived in such a time and belong to such a race. (
Cheers.
)

When we look back on the time before the war, we see how easy it was for foreigners to think that the British Empire was only a figment of the imagination – we see how easy it was for them to think that we were given over to ease, slothfulness, luxury, and party politics, that we were a great people whose climax had been reached at the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo, and that we were now passing placidly down the slope which so many other great Empires and nations had trod, I do not blame them. I do not blame these foreign nations, friends, neutrals, or foes, for their great miscalculation. But what a miscalculation it was! This war has proved the soundness of the British race at every point. There has been no test to which they have not been subjected – and extraordinarily varied those tests have been – but there has been no test in which the stock has not been found absolutely sound. We see the victories and the prodigies performed by our armies; the great work of the British Navy, on which all depended. (
Cheers.
) But it is British institutions that have triumphed just as much as martial deeds by flood and field and in the air. All over the world, in every country, it is to the British way of doing things that they are looking now.

Of all the tests of the soundness of our institutions nothing can equal that proof which was given when the great communities, the Dominions of the Crown over the seas, so many thousands of miles from the area of conflict, enjoying absolute freedom, enjoying in all senses an absolute practical independence, tinder no pressure of any kind, but with a pure, spontaneous feeling, obeying no call but that of the blood – when these great Dominions, without a moment’s hesitation, entered a quarrel, as to the beginning of which they could not necessarily have been consulted, and hastened to pour out their blood and treasure, and raise themselves in the struggle of arms to a foremost place. That gift which came back to us in this old land, in this small island, from the principles of freedom, that is one of the great and amazing proofs of the soundness of British institutions which the Great War has revealed.

‘BOLSHEVIST ATROCITIES’

11 April 1919

Aldwych Club Luncheon, Connaught Rooms, London

As a civil war raged in Russia between the ‘White’ (or Tsarist) Russians and the ‘Reds’ (Communists), Churchill did what he could to get munitions and supplies to the anti-Soviet forces. He later admitted that he had ‘tried to strangle Bolshevism in its cradle’.

The British Government has issued a White-book giving a vivid picture, based on authentic evidence, of Bolshevist atrocities. Tyranny presents itself in many forms. The British nation is the foe of tyranny in every form. That is why we fought Kaiserism and that is why we would fight it again. That is why we are opposing Bolshevism. Of all tyrannies in history the Bolshevist tyranny is the worst, the most destructive, and the most degrading. It is sheer humbug to pretend that it is not far worse than German militarism. The miseries of the Russian people under the Bolshevists far surpass anything they suffered even under the Tsar, The atrocities by Lenin and Trotsky are incomparably more hideous, on a larger scale, and more numerous than any for which the Kaiser himself is responsible. There is this also to be remembered – whatever crimes the Germans have committed, and we have not spared them in framing our indictment, at any rate they stuck to their Allies. They misled them, they exploited them, but they did not desert, or betray them. It may have been honour among thieves, but that is better than dishonour among murderers.

Lenin and Trotsky had no sooner seized on power than they dragged the noble Russian nation out of the path of honour and let loose on us and our Allies a whole deluge of German reinforcements, which burst on us in March and April of last year. Every British and French soldier killed last year was really done to death by Lenin and Trotsky, not in fair war, but by the treacherous desertion of an ally without parallel in the history of the world. There are still Russian Armies in the field, under Admiral Koltchak and General Deniken, who have never wavered in their faith and loyalty to the Allied cause, and who are fighting valiantly and by no means unsuccessfully against that foul combination of criminality and animalism which constitutes the Bolshevist régime. We are helping these men, within the limits which are assigned to us, to the very best of our ability. We are helping them with arms and munitions, with instructions and technical experts, who volunteered for service. It would not be right for us to send our armies raised on a compulsory basis to Russia. If Russia is to be saved it must be by Russian manhood. But all our hearts are with these men who are true to the Allied cause in their splendid struggle to restore the honour of united Russia, and to rebuild on a modern and democratic basis the freedom, prosperity, and happiness of its trustful and good-hearted people.

FAREWELL TO ‘THE BEER OF OLD ENGLAND’

18 July 1919

Mansion House, London

In thanking General Pershing and his fellow Americans for their contribution to securing victory, Churchill commiserates that these gallant men will be returning to a land of Prohibition.

We are all delighted to see General Pershing and his gallant Americans over here. (
Cheers.
) We are passing through a phase of intense rejoicing almost reaching the extremes to which human beings are capable, and the rejoicings after the great war are like everything else in that great war – on a scale and in a degree of intensity in proportion to this unique period. But in all of this rejoicing there is no occasion which has given more real and genuine pleasure to those who have taken part in it than being present here today in the Guildhall and coming here to the hospitable board of the Lord Mayor to welcome General Pershing and the distinguished American General’s staff, officers and others whom he has brought with him. (
Cheers.
)

We hope that they will carry away very pleasant memories of their all too brief visit to England. I am emboldened in this hope by a reflection, which came across my mind this morning, when I had the honour of being present at the parade of the American Regiment and of following the Prince of Wales along the line of that magnificent infantry. The solemn thought came across my mind that not one of these magnificent men would in a few weeks have a drop to drink again. (
Laughter.
) And I could not help feeling that among other memories which they will carry back from Europe there will be at least some of them who will preserve an affectionate sentiment for the estaminets and the red wine of France, and perhaps also for the beer of Old England. (
Laughter.
) I even hope, if it is not too sanguine, that in the future some at least of them will be drawn back to this country again and may resume with us, assuming we are still in a state of freedom and independence, the relaxation and indulgences which cheered their lives during the hard days of the war.