Language as Jet : An appreciation of Blood , Toil, Tears and Sweat : The Great speeches

                                          (During and after the WW II)                       

Churchill’s speeches during the war roused the Britishers to fight against Hitler’s regime. In his famous speech titled  Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat ( 13 May,1940) , Churchill recalled to head the government says

 You ask, what is our aim ? I can answer in one word: Victory -victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be ; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire; no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. (149 )              

This shows that war is between an empire fast declining and another one which is hoping to rise. This is a war between imperialists. At the same time Churchill rouses his nation to wage war against tyranny. He uses ‘wage war’ repeatedly to rouse the nation in crisis.

 You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny , never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.” (149)

His words are stirring in his speech ‘Wars Are Not Won by Evacuations’ ( 4 June, 1940) .;

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on  the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence 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, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…(165)

He exhorts his countrymen to stand up to Hitler as follows :

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… 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.” (178)  

In the same speech he uses phrases such as  ‘disillusioned eye’ and we come across  ‘prodigious slaughter’ , ‘Olympian fortitude’ ( In “A Long and Hard War’, 1941)

 In his speech ‘The Few’ (1940) we find the undimmed hope :

The British nation and the British Empire finding themselves alone, stood undismayed against disaster. No one flinched or wavered; nay, some who formerly thought of peace, now think only of war. Our people are united and resolved , as they have never been before. Death and ruin have become small things compared with the shame of defeat or failure in duty. (184-185)      

The War was won by the UK against Hitler  but the Empire which was expected to last forever    began crumbling in 1947 with India gaining independence.

In post war period Churchill spoke  against socialism and ‘abject worship of State’ and says in his speech ‘Some form of Gestapo’ (1945):

“Socialism is, in its essence, an attack not only upon British enterprise, but upon the  right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy , tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils.’’ (273)

 In his speech ‘The Iron Curtain’, 1946 he still  spoke glowingly about Russia.

       “I have strong admiration and regard for the valiant Russian peoples and for my wartime comrade Marshall Stalin.”

“While wishing for abiding friendship, the rightful place for Russia among the leading nations of the world, he  immediately expresses his apprehension From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic , an iron curtain has descended across the  continent” (303) During the  Cold war period this antagonism continued in the backdrop of  threat of  nuclear Armageddon.    

Even way back in 1919, Churchill used the language of solid imperialist against Russian Revolution. “Of all tyrannies in history the Bolshevist tyranny is the worst, the most destructive , and the most degrading. It is sheer humbug to pretend that it is not far worse than German militarism. The miseries of Russian people under the bolshevists far surpass anything they suffered under the Tsar.” (88)

He was bitter since Russia withdrew from imperialist war causing the deaths of many s imperialist soldiers , supported  White army generals who lost at the end ,  worried over the prospects of revolution in Germany,  and describes the Russian Bolshevist  causing  anarchic destruction and calling for resisting ‘the advances of Bolshevist tyranny’ (92)

He, after the second World War, praised  in his speech ‘Never Despair’ delivered in  1955 ‘the glorious defence of their native soil by the Russian armies and people have inflicted wounds upon the Nazy  tyranny ’ (343) and said he was not against Russian people. Despite Russian  mighty role  in defeating Germany at an enormous cost in the second World war, Churchill’s opposition to the Soviet regime continued afterwards. But it was the Soviet Union which stood by India in its struggle for freedom.