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[Applause] [Applause] Members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives of the United States, Uh, I feel greatly honored that you should have invited me to enter the United States Senate Chamber and address the representatives of both branches of Congress.
The fact that my American forebears have for so many generations played their part in the life of the United States. And that here I am, an Englishman welcomed in your midst, makes this experience one of the most moving and thrilling in my life, which is already long and has not been entirely uneventful. I I wish I wish indeed that my mother whom memory I cherish across the veil of years could have been here to see. By the way, uh I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own.
[Applause] like a fish out of water in a legislative assembly where English is spoken. I'm a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my father's house to believe in democracy. Trust the people. That was his message. I used to see him cheered at meetings and in the streets by crowds of working men way back in those aristocratic Victorian days when as the Israelis said the world was for the few and for the very few.
Therefore, I have been in full harmony all my life with the tides which have flowed on both sides of the Atlantic against privilege and monopoly. And I have steered confidently towards the Gettysburg ideal of government of the people, by the people, for the people.
[Music] [Applause] I owe my advancement entirely to the House of Commons whose servant I am. In my country and in yours, public men are proud to be the servants of the state and would be ashamed to be its masters. on any day if they thought it if they thought the people wanted it, the House of Commons could by a simple vote remove me from my office. But I'm not worrying about it at all. uh as a matter of fact I am sure they will approve very highly of my journey here for which I obtained the king's permission in order to meet the president of the United States and to arrange with him for all that mapping out of our military plans and for all those intimate meetings of the high officers of the armed services in both countries which are indispensable to the successful prosecution of the war.
I should like to say first of all how much I have been impressed and encouraged by the breadth of view and sense of proportion which I have found in all quarters over here to which I've had access. Anyone who did not understand the size and solidarity of the foundations of the United States might easily have expected to find an excited, disturbed, self-centered atmosphere with all minds fixed upon the novel, startling and painful episodes of sudden war as they hit America. After all, the United States have been attacked and set upon by three most powerfully armed dictator states. The greatest military power in Europe, the greatest military power in Asia. Japan, Germany, and Italy have all declared and are making war upon you. and a quarrel is open which can only end in their overthrow or yours.
But here in Washington, in these memorable days, I have found an Olympian fortitude which far from being based upon complacency is only the mask of an inflexible purpose and the proof of a sure well-grounded confidence in the final outcome. And the and their factions who have launched their peoples on the path of war and conquest know that they will be called to terrible account if they cannot beat down by force of arms the peoples they have assailed. They will stop at nothing. They have a vast accumulation of war weapons of all kinds. They have highly trained and disciplined armies, navies, and air services. They have plans and designs which have long been contrived and matured. They will stop at nothing that violence or treachery can suggest.
It is quite true that on our side, our resources in manpower and materials are far greater than theirs. But only a portion of your resources are as yet mobilized and developed. And we both of us have much to learn in the cruel art of war. We have therefore without doubt a time of tribulation before us. In this same time, some ground will be lost, which it will be hard and costly to regain. Many disappointments and unpleasant surprises await us. Many of them will afflict us before the full marshalling of our latent and total power can be accomplished.
For the best part of 20 years, the youth of Britain and America have been taught that war was evil, which is true, and that it would never come again, which has been proved false. For the best part of 20 years, the youth of Germany, of Japan, and Italy have been taught that aggressive war is the noblest duty of the citizen, and that it should be begun as soon as the necessary weapons and organization have been made. We have performed the duties and tasks of peace. They have plotted and planned for war. This naturally has placed us in Britain and now places you in the United States at a disadvantage which only time, courage and untiring exertion can correct.
We have indeed to be thankful that so much time has been granted to us. If Germany had tried to invade the British Isles after the French collapse in June 1940, and if Japan had declared war on the British Empire and the United States at about the same date, no one can say what disasters and agonies might not have been a lot. But now to total war efficiency has made very great progress. The broad flow of munitions in Great Britain has already begun. Immense strides have been made in the conversion of American industry to military purposes. And now that the United States is at war, it is possible for orders to be given every day which in a year or 18 months. Hence will produce results in war power beyond anything that has been seen or foreseen.
The Russian menace which hangs over Japan. It becomes still more difficult to reconcile Japanese action with prudence or even with sanity. What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget.
[Music] [Music] [Applause] Members of the Senate and members of the House of Representatives, I will turn for one moment more. From the turmoil and convulsions of the present to the broader spaces of the future. Here we are together facing a group of mighty foes who seek our ruin. Here we are together defending all that to free men is dear. Twice in a single generation, the catastrophe of world war has fallen upon us. Twice in our lifetime has the long arm of fate reached out across the oceans to bring the United States into the forefront of the battle.
If we had kept together after the last war, if we had taken common measures for our safety, this renewal of the curse need never have fallen upon us.
[Music] Do we not owe it to ourselves, to our children, to tormented mankind to make sure that these catastrophes do not engulf us for the third time? It has been proved that pestilences may break out in the old world which carry their destructive ravages into the new world from which once they are a foot the new world can not escape. Duty and prudence alike command. First, that the germ centers of hatred and revenge should be constantly and vigilantly served and treated in good time and that all and that an adequate organization should be set up to make sure that the pestilence can be controlled at its earliest beginnings before it spreads and rages throughout the entire earth.
Five or six years ago, it would have been easy without shedding a drop of blood for the United States and Great Britain to have insisted on the fulfillment of the disarmament clauses of the treaties which Germany signed after the Great War. And that also would have been the opportunity for assuring to the Germans. Those materials, those raw materials which we declared in the Atlantic Charter should not be denied to any nation victor or vanquished. The chance has passed. It is gone.
Prodigious hammer strokes have been needed to bring us together today. If you will allow me to use other language, I will say that he must indeed have a a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below of which we have the honor to be the faithful servants. It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolet, that in the days to come, the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together in majesty, in justice, and in peace.
[Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.