A speech by Western Churchill. I redid little parts of it to fit the theme of the Aetherlight, but most of it is from him.
I have nothing to offer it blood, toil, tears and sweat.
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind.
We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.
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 the monstrous Tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime.
That is our policy.
You ask, what is our aim?
I can answer in one word, victory.
Victory at all costs.
Victory in spite of all terror.
Victory, how ever long and hard the road may be.
For without victory, there is not survival.
Now, We are the masters of our fate.
That the task that has been set us, is not above our strength.
That it’s pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance.
As long as we have faith in our cause And An unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.
Lucky knows that he will have to brake us in this island or lose the war.
Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duty’s.
And so bear ourselves, that if the Resistance and it’s common wealth, last for a thousand years, men will still say, “this, was their finest hour”.
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
We shall fight in No Man’s Landing, we shall fight in the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, what ever 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 hills.
We shall never surrender!
Never give in.
Never, never, never.
In nothing, great or small, large or petty.
Never give in except to convections 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 worlds it seemed that our account was closed.
We were finished.
All this tradition of ours, our Aethetion history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated.
Very different is the mood today.
Resestance, other people 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 our island, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say we can be sure that we only have to persevere, to conquer.
