Abstract
BY means of the radio, Mr. Winston Churchill and General Smuts, who will surely go down in history as two of the leading statesmen of these days, recently gave addresses which will mark, possibly the close of a stage, possibly the opening of a new period of activity, in the progress of the War. Mr. Churchill gave a careful and moderately worded survey of the present position in the Balkans, North Africa and the Atlantic. He did not minimize the difficulties of the situation, but he made it quite clear that we could not have done otherwise than we did in answering the call of Greece; to have left Greece to her fate “would be fatal to the honour of the British Empire, without which we could neither hope nor deserve to win this hard war”. It is by actions such as this, and by our bearing under the pitiless rain of blows aimed at our cities and our merchant ships as well as at our armed forces, that we have gained the admiration and support of the people of the United States, and in spite of all the arguments about American interests and safety being threatened by Nazi doctrines, “the action of the United States will be dictated not by methodical calculations of profit and loss, but by moral sentiments and that gleaming flash of resolve which lifts the hearts of men and nations, and springs from the spiritual foundations of human life itself”.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Democracies and Honour. Nature 147, 537 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147537a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147537a0