Almost a year has passed since I came down here
at your Head Master's kind invitation in order to cheer myself
and cheer the hearts of a few of my friends by singing some of
our own songs. The ten months that have passed have seen very
terrible catastrophic events in the world - ups and downs, misfortunes
- but can anyone sitting here this afternoon, this October afternoon,
not feel deeply thankful for what has happened in the time that
has passed and for the very great improvement in the position
of our country and of our home? Why, when I was here last time
we were quite alone, desperately alone, and we had been so for
five or six months. We were poorly armed. We are not so poorly
armed today; but then we were very poorly armed. We had the unmeasured
menace of the enemy and their air attack still beating upon us,
and you yourselves had had experience of this attack; and I expect
you are beginning to feel impatient that there has been this long
lull with nothing particular turning up!
But we must learn to be equally good at what
is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally
said that the British are often better at the last. They do not
expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect
that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when
they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be
done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes
months - if it takes years - they do it.
Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing
our minds back to our meeting here ten months ago and now, is
that appearances are often very deceptive, and as Kipling well
says, we must "…meet with Triumph and Disaster. And
treat those two impostors just the same."
You cannot tell from appearances how things will
go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they
are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people
who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist;
certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also
pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching
imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through
in this period - I am addressing myself to the School - surely
from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give
in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great
or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions
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 countries it seemed that our account was
closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs,
our School history, this part of the history of this country,
were gone and finished and liquidated.
Very different is the mood today. Britain, other
nations 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
these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find
ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we
have only to persevere to conquer.
You sang here a verse of a School Song: you sang
that extra verse written in my honour, which I was very greatly
complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there is
one word in it I want to alter - I wanted to do so last year,
but I did not venture to. It is the line: "Not less we praise
in darker days."
I have obtained the Head Master's permission
to alter darker to sterner. "Not less we praise in sterner
days."
Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak
rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great
days - the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must
all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according
to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable
in the history of our race.
