We're Too Young to Fall Asleep

Tonight as I finished reading The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940, I was struck by Churchill's speech to the British people on June 18, 1940. The speech was carried by the BBC and came just before the Battle of Britain, which would test the resolve of the English nation to its very core.

"Hitler knows that he will have to break us on this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: 'This was their finest hour.' "

Current Listening

Radiohead--The Bends