Our honour shouts louder than any noise in the world
TODAY, 77 years ago, the D-day landings marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War. The next day the Daily Express carried this leader column, reflecting on the agonies of the past four years after the Dunkirk evacuation, and the renewed certainty of total victory. As the worldwide fight to defeat coronavirus enters what we hope is the final stage, many themes in the piece appear strikingly familiar to a modern reader
FOUR YEARS is a long time to wait. A long time for a man, a long time for a nation. Four years to wait to regain honour, to keep promise with peoples we pledged to aid. Four years to wait to remove by the violence of supreme indignation a great affront to the name of Englishman.
You who read this today, are you not proud? Does it not concern the innermost privacy of your being, that thing that happened four years ago?
Has it not rankled and nagged and burdened all sweetness of life left to you?
All the horror and all the humiliation of those terrible nine days, four years ago, were suffused by the great glow of English heroism, so that shame was forgotten and we were reborn in glory.
But the shame was there. We were beaten and did not know it. We were beaten and our enemy did not know it. The
British army, a fine army well trained and in magnificent spirits, was driven from the continent of Europe, stripped of its arms, wetted by calm seas, broken and impotent.
Only the spirit of England was left to us. The might of England was dissolved.
If you had searched for it, those nine summer days, you would have found it only in the history books.
Why was this? Where had it gone – the story of England? It had crept away from us and found a refuge in the breast of a man.as it has before; as it will again.
He fed us. What he had in himself he gave unsparingly. It was a simple gift.what he gave us back was the dignity of being an Englishman.
From there the story is plain. Fortified by great words, the genius of us all came awake again. Believing in ourselves and trusting our neighbours to be like us, we began to work. How hard we worked! With what grim concentration we gave our skill and spirit to the common task. It was not the fever of desperation that spurred us. It was the greater instinct. Honour.
Our complacency on that date fell away from us. Comfort-loving, peace-loving,
tolerant, easy-going, blind, a little smug we were – and those were faults that had grown like soft moss on a hard trunk, on to the pillar of our good way of life.
We threw it all away.we became exhilarated by the new consciousness of our destiny. We worked. Then came the bad times again.we worked.
Singapore fell. The Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau slipped through our Channel. Tobruk. Rommel. Bombing. The slaughter of the convoys.we worked on. In darkness, in ignorance of the prime causes or the imperatives of the struggle, we went on.
On the walls there began to appear in chalk, “Open the Second Front NOW”.
In Trafalgar Square Englishmen gathered. They felt strong; they felt aggressive. They wanted their honour among the nations back again – and back quick.
Under the eyes of our Allies we worked, saying little.the heart grew sore and heavy so that little could then be done in the way of diminishing the German army.
The testing time, the trying time of the English character was not the delirious days of Dunkirk; it was the days of waiting. The ache in the hearts of all of us did not say “When will it be over?” It said “When will it begin?” It has begun. The
third and last episode in the rebirth of Britain is now beginning. All we worked for, all we believe in now, goes to the trial.
How can it fail, since it is our sincere best – and that has never been bettered by anyone else since the world began.
Why did hundreds of thousands of women leave their quiet homes and go and live in hostels near the factories in the wilds of Yorkshire and Scotland?
Why did old men put on a beret and fight fires by night when they should have been sitting by them?
Why did the best men and women of this nation give themselves selflessly year after year, week, day, hour to the job of becoming more skilful in battle, more powerful and more terrible than the enemy we hate and despise? It was for today.
Today our honour asserts itself. It shouts louder than any other noise in the world.
It drowns the thunder of the bombing and conceals the roaring of the motors of vengeance.who is with us today?
The young peoples of the world are with us. America, fresh, vigorous and arrogant in her superb youth – she is with us. And young Canada, where sweet green of nature has married steel of purpose.
We are on the West. To the South in the
Mediterranean, the army of young France, impatient to be reborn, joins the Empire and the Allies in the common assault.
To the East is young Russia, solemn and awe-full in the dignity of her great victories.they are with us.
And the young, as anybody knows, have in them an integrity and decency, a ruthless goodness that cannot long be denied.
Germany is old. These foul little Nazis have nothing original about them.
They ape Bismarck while they clown at being modern. There is in Germany today the stench of old crime – the little Hitlers for all their strutting are sour with old sin.
Evil is always old. Down, down it goes, fighting a desperate rearguard action against death, always defensive, always cynical and worldly-wise and false.
How can it prevail, this crabbed and vicious thing against the supreme indignation of young men?
In Germany today boys of 16 are old and practised in political vice. We do not rescue them for they are beyond recall.
The rest of their lives must be spent in expiation.they must follow the doctrine of St James – justification by works – for they are beyond the benevolence of St Paul.
By their works we shall know them, these young Nazis, in the days to come.
By their sweat we shall judge their repentance: for there is so much they must rebuild. Nearly all of European civilisation and gentle life must be put back again.
Whatever the Peace Treaty demands,
‘The young people of the world are with us’ ‘We, the British, will take no compromise’
that must come first. We the British, determined on this end and fortified by our great friends, will take no compromise.
We do not compromise ourselves – why should we allow it to our enemy?
For we have held back nothing. All that there is in us crosses the sea today and in days to come. A Yorkshire chin, Welsh tears, the slow hands of Kent, Scots shrewdness and London gaiety – all cross the Channel. Our land is empty today.
They tell a story about Montgomery – when he was a young lieutenant in India the German warship Gneisenau came to port for a courtesy visit.
Monty was sports officer of his unit and his CO suggested a football match with the visitors, warning the boy to pick only a fairish team, for diplomacy’s sake.
The British team trotted out. The result of the match was Britain 35 – Germany 0.
Angry, the colonel of the regiment taxed the young officer, asking him why he had fielded, against orders, the best team available. “I didn’t feel like taking a chance with the Germans, sir,” he answered.
History does repeat herself.
A GROWING number of Tory MPS have gone public in their opposition to Boris Johnson’s cut to foreign aid.
They include former PM Theresa May, inset, her former deputy Damian Green and ex-health secretary Jeremy Hunt. Their constituencies are in, respectively, Berkshire, Kent and Surrey.
Do you imagine if they answered to places such as Bradford, Keighley and Sunderland, they might see the wisdom of spending our money at home, rather than on often dubious projects that seem designed to make politicians feel better about themselves?