In eleven days, we shall commemorate the 70th anniversary of Sir Winston Churchill’s most famous House of Commons speech. As I read it today, I was moved by its simple, yet staggering resonance with what is best in British people: a steely resolve to commit ourselves to the most horrendous of challenges and then refer to it as our mere duty under God. As we fight tyranny and hardship today on several fronts, we should return to this commitment to duty, both towards the God who delivered our ancestors from Hitler and our fellow man:
‘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 will 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 with one word: 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.’
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