WSC to the House of Commons, 3 September 1939

 86 years ago today, the British Empire joined France in declaring war on Germany two days after Adolf Hitler unleashed his Wehrmacht into Poland. The Second World War had begun, and Winston Churchill, finally out of the political wilderness after a decade, rose to speak before Parliament as the reappointed First Lord of the Admiralty in Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s new war cabinet. In his first speech since returning to high office, Churchill initially spoke of Britain’s remorse that peace had not been achieved despite the country’s best efforts to avoid further bloodshed in Europe. But ultimately, in true Churchillian form, he spoke of his unbroken confidence in the British people’s resolve, once in the war, to see it through to the bitter end. “This is not a question of fighting for Danzig or fighting for Poland,” he asserted in his peroration:

“We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is most sacred to man. This is no war of domination or imperial aggrandizement or material gain; no war to shut any country out of its sunlight and means of progress. It is a war, viewed in its inherent quality, to establish, on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual, and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man. Perhaps it might seem a paradox that a war undertaken in the name of liberty and right should require, as a necessary part of its processes, the surrender for the time being of so many of the dearly valued liberties and rights. In these last few days the House of Commons has been voting dozens of Bills which hand over to the executive our most dearly valued traditional liberties. We are sure that these liberties will be in hands which will not abuse them, which will use them for no class or party interests, which will cherish and guard them, and we look forward to the day, surely and confidently we look forward to the day, when our liberties and rights will be restored to us, and when we shall be able to share them with the peoples to whom such blessings are unknown.”

—WSC to the House of Commons, 3 September 1939