Part 5
“The sight of those two old, visibly decaying, men going at each other with the passion and intensity of a pair of prize-fighters in their prime electrified me and the crowd.” Jeremy Wolfenden: Out and About in London and Moscow
From the Oxford Union Debate 1956 Wilson vs Churchill.
Moderator: Mr. Churchill has indicated that he would like to respond. As many of you are no doubt aware Mr. Churchill is one of our most distinguished academics here at Oxford, and his
History of the English-Speaking Peoples has been a continual bestseller. He has seen an extremely varied career as a soldier, journalist, MP, painter, he served as First Lord of the Admiralty in the First Great War and Secretary of State for War during the Second Great War. He has been both a Liberal and A Conservative. He is perhaps unique in the history of this university as being the only professor appointed without an undergraduate degree, in acknowledgement of his outstanding work in his field. Mr. Churchill, you may begin.
Churchill: Thank you Mr. MacAdam, though I hope you are more prepared when you present your thesis to me.
In 1938, this country ensured that debates such as this could continue, that we would not hang Mr. MacAdam here for being Scottish. That he can write whatever he desires in his blasted thesis. Similarly, and on a more serious note we ensured that freedom of speech, freedom of thought and most importantly the freedom simply
to be existed. Sir Horace has described at length our loss of place in the world, our loss of prestige and power. I cannot deny this. Yet know that it was these feelings of loss that led to the annexation of Austria and the Sudeten Crisis. If we do not learn from them then there is no hope for peace in Europe. Is there any need for further floods of agony? Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable? Let there be justice, mercy and freedom. The people have only to will it, and all will achieve their hearts' desire. We have proved our ideals in the harsh fire of the furnace; we have struggled, fought and died to ensure that dictators, tyrants and demagogues shall have no hold over us. Now let us prove that we stand for greater, nobler ideals than they.
There is another question which arises out of this. Can peace, goodwill, and confidence be built upon submission to wrong-doing backed by force? What world would we be creating if justice was merely doled out upon the weak by the strong? Consider, had we allowed Herr Hitler a free hand to descend upon Prague. Where would he turn next? Warsaw? Brussels? Paris? London? Would we raise a hand only when tanks were rolling down Whitehall? For this is surely what would happen. Herr Hitler built his following on intolerance and preying on the weakness of his opponents. He would take a slice, and then another. Constantly saying that this was all he wanted. We would have shown weakness in failing to defend Prague, and he would have capitalised on it. Dictators know no moderation; they seek to kill the ideas which are repellent to them, when they cannot defeat them in argument they ban speech, when they cannot convince you to think otherwise they ban books and films, finally when they cannot make you into them they kill you. Ladies, Gentlemen; I am a product of the empire, I rode with the last charge of the British cavalry. I saw battle in the Sudan, the North-West Frontier and South Africa before most of your fathers were even born and I can categorically state this. The loss of the status, wealth, power of this country is insignificant next to the knowledge that people throughout Europe do not have to live under a regime like that of Adolf Hitler.
