Democracy in wartime

When a peaceful democracy is suddenly made to fight for its life, there must be a lot of trouble and hardship in the process of turning over from peace to war.

1939, 1 October. Broadcast, London.

(Blood, 207.)

Peaceful Parliamentary countries, which aim at freedom for the individual and abundance for the mass, start with a heavy handicap against a dictatorship whose sole theme has been war, the preparation for war, and the grinding up of everything and everybody into its military machine.

1939,  12 November.

During the last 250 years the British Parliament has fought several great and long European wars with unwearied zeal and tenacity, and carried them all to a conclusion. In this war they are fighting not only for themselves, but for Parliamentary institutions wherever they have been set up all over the globe.

1940, 27 January. Free Trade Hall, Manchester. (Blood, 262.)

Immense surrenders of their hard-won liberties have been voluntarily made by the British people in order in time of war to serve the better the cause of freedom and fair play, to which, keeping nothing back, they have devoted all that they have and all that they are. Parliament stands custodian of these surrendered liberties, and its most sacred duty will be to restore them in their fullness when victory has crowned our exertions and our perseverance.

1940,  21 November.

It has been aptly remarked that Ministers, and indeed all other public men when they make speeches at the present time, have always to bear in mind three audiences, one our own fellow countrymen, secondly, our friends abroad, and thirdly, the enemy. This naturally makes the task of public speaking very difficult.

1941,  12 November.

The duty of a democracy in wartime is not to conceal but to confuse, “not the silence of the oyster serene in its grotto, but the smudge and blur of the cuttlefish.”

1943, Quebec. (Dilks, 239.)

There is, I gather, in some quarters the feeling that the way to win the war is to knock the Government about, keep them up to the collar, and harry them from every side; and I find that hard to bear with Christian patience.

1944, 22 February.