Their finest hour

 

 

Quod Dux Weygandus nominavit Prœlium Franciæ est finitum. Puto Prœlium Britanniæ incepturum esse. Hoc prœlio dependet salus Christianæ humanitatis; hoc dependent nostrimet Britannici mores, et longa continuatio institutorum nostrorum atque Imperii. Totum furoris et vis hostium citissime in nos venturum est: scit Hitlerus sibi aut nos in hac insula debellare aut bello vici. Si poterimus resistere, omnis Europa liberetur, et vita orbis progrediatur in lata, aprica montana. Sed si deërimus, tota orbs, Rebuspublicis Consociatis contentis, contentis omnibus quæ cognoveramus atque curavimus, demergetur in profundum novæ Aetatis Tenebrosæ, pravioris, et fortasse durabilioris, lucem propter scientiæ corruptæ. Nos ergo paremeus ad officia, et sic nos feramus, ut, si Imperium Britannicum et Respublica ejus in millennium durabunt, etiam dicent homines hanc fuisse horam optimam.

 

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation; upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us: Hitler knows that he will have to break us in 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 that 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.

 

—Winston Churchill