The Churchill Series - Nov. 13, 2005

(One of a series of daily posts about Winston S. Churchill.)

In the early evening of November 10, 1940, a private secretary at Buckingham Palace phoned the Admiralty office: The King wanted the First Lord to visit him as soon as possible.

The First Lord had expected the call. He want immediately to the Palace.

When King George VI and his First Lord, Winston Churchill, met the King asked Churchill to form a new Government to succeed the one led by Neville Chamberlain, whose appeasement policies lay in ruins that night as Nazi forces swept through the Low countries and France, and drove British forces back to the sea.

Churchill formed a Government, and on May 13 the King's new Prime Minister stood in Commons and described the peril Britain and the free world faced. His speech included the imperishable: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

Churchill closed with words of resolution, promise and courage:

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.

You ask, what is our policy?

I can 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; to wage war 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: It is victory; victory at all costs; victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be. For without victory, there is no survival.

Let that be realized: no survival for the British Empire; no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards 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."

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Martin Gilbert, Churchill:A Life. (p. 646)