After a series of defeats from
Dunkirk to Singapore, Churchill could finally tell the House of
Commons that "we have a new experience. We have victory - a
remarkable and definite victory."
Alexander and Montgomery turned
back Rommel's forces at El Alamein, thus winning what Churchill
called "The Battle of Egypt." I have never promised anything but
blood, tears, toil, and sweat. Now, however,
The bright gleam has caught the
helmets of our soldiers, and warmed and cheered all our
hearts.
The late M. Venizelos observed
that in all her wars England -- he should have said Britain, of
course -- always wins one battle -- the last. It would seem to have
begun rather earlier this time. General Alexander, with his brilliant
comrade and lieutenant, General Montgomery, has gained a glorious and
decisive victory in what I think should be called the battle of
Egypt. Rommel's army has been defeated. It has been routed. It has
been very largely destroyed as a fighting force.
This battle was not fought for
the sake of gaining positions or so many square miles of desert
territory. General Alexander and General Montgomery fought it with
one single idea. they meant to destroy the armed force of the enemy
and to destroy it at the place where the disaster would be most
far-reaching and irrecoverable....
Now this is not the end. It is
not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the
beginning. Henceforth Hitler's Nazis will meet equally well armed,
and perhaps better armed troops. Hence forth they will have to face
in many theatres of war that superiority in the air which they have
so often used without mercy against other, of which they boasted all
round the world, and which they intended to use as an instrument for
convincing all other peoples that all resistance to them was
hopeless....
We mean to hold our own. I have
not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the
liquidation of the British Empire. For that task, if ever it were
prescribed, someone else would have to be found, and, under
democracy, I suppose the nation would have to be consulted. I am
proud to be a member of that vast commonwealth and society of nations
and communities gathered in and around the ancient British monarchy,
without which the good cause might well have perished from the face
of the earth. Here we are, and here we stand, a veritable rock of
salvation in this drifting world....
The British and American
affairs continue to prosper in the Mediterranean, and the whole event
will be a new bond between the English-speaking peoples and a new
hope for the whole world.
I recall to you some lines of
Byron, which seem to me to fit the event, the hour, and the theme:
