Monday, May 11, 2020

VE Day Postscript

On June 4th 1940 Churchill gave one of his most famous wartime speeches. And this is the central passage.

'We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.'

I always knew it was a powerful piece of rhetoric. He managed to convey strength of character as he channelled a British strength of character. The emotion flew way ahead of the words. But, although I have heard it many times before, I only worked out recently that he expected to lose.

Mark Forsyth shows us this in his book 'The Elements of Eloquence'. In the chapter on anaphora (starting each phrase or sentence with the same word or words) he quotes this speech. And he shows us that all people remember are the big verbs - fight, defend, never surrender.

And so it is constantly quoted to encourage us to win at things.

Apparently, and my Wikipedia source is not completely certain, he spoke in the lobby after the speech of fighting with the broken ends of beer bottles if necessary. Let's add in a few things the audience were not encouraged to think during the speech:

'We shall go on to the end (our end).
We shall fight in France... (and then when we are driven out of France)
... we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches,... (when they invade)
...we shall fight on the landing grounds,... (when they try to land)
...we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,... (when they win on the beaches and landing grounds)
...we shall fight in the hills;... (when driven out of our streets and fields)
...we shall never surrender.' (we will become a resistance movement)

A following passage exhorted the new world to get organised and come to the rescue of the old world, eventually.

He expected us to lose yet spoke with the energy of a winner. That's the genius of it. It took me a while to see it.

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