1941-08-29_BBC_Winston_Churchill_These_Are_Great_Days

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Almost a year has passed since I came down here
at your Headmaster's kind invitation, in order to chair myself
and share the hearts of a few of my friends,
I see some of our own songs. The ten months
that have passed have seen very terrible catastrophic events in

(00:22):
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

(00:44):
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 poorly armed today, But then
we were very poorly armed. We had the unmiss good
menace of the enemy, and their air attacks still beating
upon us, and you, ourselves, had had experience of this attack.

(01:09):
And I expect you are beginning to feel impatient that
there's been this long lull with nothing particular turning up.
You cannot tell from appearances how things shall go. Sometimes
imagination makes sing how far worse than they are. Yet
without imagination, not much can be done. Those people who

(01:30):
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'm addressing myself to the school, Surely,

(01:54):
in 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 pity. Never give in
except the convictions of honor 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

(02:17):
to many countries it seemed that our account was closed.
We were finished. All this tradition of ours, our school, history,
our songs, this part of the history of our country,
all were gone and finished and liquidated. Very different is
the mood today Britain. Our nations thought had drawn us

(02:41):
spunge across our straight but instead our country stood in
the gap. There was no finishing, no thought of giving in.
And by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside
the islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now
find ourselves in a position where I say, and be
sure that we have only to persevere to conquer. You

(03:05):
sang here a verse of a school song? Who sang
that extra verse written in my honor? Which I was
very greatly complimented by, and which you have repeated today.
But there is one word in it. I want a walter.
I wanted to do so last year, but I did
not venture to. It is the line, not less we

(03:29):
praise in darker days, I have obtained the headmaster'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 our country

(03:52):
has ever lived. And we would all thank God that
we have been allowed, each of us, according to our stations,
to play fought in making these days memorable in the
history of our race.