On Leadership

(Image Courtesy of the University of Virginia)

Back in April, my wife and I were lucky enough to travel to London my my parents, my brother and his fiance. My parents, who were so generous as to cover the cost associated with this trip, did so in part because London is one of their favorite cities in their world, and they wanted to share this with their children.

During a wonderful week in this city, we spent some time at the Winston Churchill Museum and the Cabinet War Rooms. Located near St. James's Park, 10 Downing Street and Westminster Abbey, the Cabinet War Rooms house the secret bunkers in which Churchill lived during the London Blitz. From these hidden, secret corridors Churchill helped steel the resolve of the British people, and the world.

The terror of Nazi fascism, and the strength necessary to stem its advance, were forecast by Churchill in a speech delivered 69 years ago today, to the House of Commons. Known today as the "Finest Hour" speech, it is one of the more famous of Churchill's, and is worth remembering today.

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 civilization. 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.'

Indeed, it was their finest hour.