The front line runs through the factories. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women, and children. There is another more obvious difference from 1914. Moves are made upon the scientific and strategic boards, advantages are gained by mechanical means, as a result of which scores of millions of men become incapable of further resistance, or judge themselves incapable of further resistance, and a fearful game of chess proceeds from check to mate by which the unhappy players seem to be inexorably bound. Although up to the present the loss of life has been mercifully diminished, the decisions reached in the course of the struggle are even more profound upon the fate of nations than anything that has ever happened since barbaric times. The entire body – it might almost seem at times the soul – of France has succumbed to physical effects incomparably less terrible than those which were sustained with fortitude and undaunted will power 25 years ago. Join us at the National WWI Museum for the 39th International Churchill Conference. We have seen the French Republic and the renowned French Army beaten into complete and total submission with less than the casualties which they suffered in any one of half a dozen of the battles of 1914-18. We have seen great countries with powerful armies dashed out of coherent existence in a few weeks.
The slaughter is only a small fraction, but the consequences to the belligerents have been even more deadly. Looking more widely around, one may say that throughout all Europe for one man killed or wounded in the first year perhaps five were killed or wounded in 1914-15. In this war, I am thankful to say, British killed, wounded, prisoners, and missing, including civilians, do not exceed 92,000, and of these a large proportion are alive as prisoners of war. The British casualties in the first 12 months of the Great War amounted to 365,000.
It is a conflict of strategy, of organisation, of technical apparatus, of science, mechanics, and morale. In this war nothing of this kind has yet appeared. “Men and shells” was the cry, and prodigious slaughter was the consequence. In the last war millions of men fought by hurling enormous masses of steel at one another. Although this war is in fact only a continuation of the last, very great differences in its character are apparent. It is also useful to compare the first year of this second war against German aggression with its forerunner a quarter of a century ago. Winston Churchill in his Royal Air Force honorary air commodore uniformĪlmost a year has passed since the war began, and it is natural for us, I think, to pause on our journey at this milestone and survey the dark, wide field. The final sentence of this speech, including the use of the word “benignant,” is a good example of Churchill’s choice of unexpected and assertive adjectives to make a phrase memorable.
In this speech Churchill coined the phrase “The Few” to describe the R.A.F fighter-pilots. The most difficult and dangerous period of the Battle of Britain was between August 24 and September 6, when the German attack was directed against the R.A.F airfields in the South of England with considerable success. All the resources of Fighter Command in the South were used. On August 15, the crisis of the battle of Britain was reached.
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