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Almost a year has passed since I
came down here at your Head Master's kind invitation in order
to cheer myself and cheer the hearts of a few of my friends by
singing some of our own songs. The ten months that have passed
have seen very terrible catastrophic events in the world - ups
and downs, misfortunes - but can anyone sitting here this
afternoon, this October afternoon, not feel deeply thankful
for what has happened in the time that has passed and for the
very great improvement in the position of our country and of
our home? Why, when I was here last time we were quite alone,
desperately alone, and we had been so for five or six months.
We were poorly armed. We are not so poorly armed today; but
then we were very poorly armed. We had the unmeasured menace
of the enemy and their air attack still beating upon us, and
you yourselves had had experience of this attack; and I expect
you are beginning to feel impatient that there has been this
long lull with nothing particular turning up!
But we must learn to be equally good at what is short and
sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that
the British are often better at the last. They do not expect
to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that
each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they
very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done
and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes
months - if it takes years - they do it.
Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing our minds
back to our meeting here ten months ago and now, is that
appearances are often very deceptive, and as Kipling well
says, we must "…meet with Triumph and Disaster. And treat
those two impostors just the same."
You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes
imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet
without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are
imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist;
certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also
pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching
imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone
through in this period - I am addressing myself to the School
- surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson:
never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in
nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except
to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force;
never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed
that our account was closed, we were finished. All this
tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of
the history of this country, were gone and finished and
liquidated.
Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations
thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our
country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no
thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to
those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted
it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we
can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.
You sang here a verse of a School Song: you sang that extra
verse written in my honour, which I was very greatly
complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there
is one word in it I want to alter - I wanted to do so last
year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: "Not less we
praise in darker days."
I have obtained the Head Master's permission to alter darker
to sterner. "Not less we praise in sterner days."
Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of
sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days -
the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all
thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to
our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in
the history of our race. |
