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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.
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