Winston Churchill's speech to the academic Youth,
Zurich, 19 September 1946
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am honoured to-day by being received in your ancient university and by
the adress which had been given to me on your behalf and which I greatly
value.
I wish to speak to you to-day about the tragedy of Europe. This noble
continent, comprising on the whole the fairest and the most cultivated
regions of the earth, enjoying a temperate and equable climate, is the home
of all the great parent races of the western world. It is the fountain of
Christian faith and Christian ethics. It is the origin of most of the
culture, the arts, philosophy and science both of ancient and modern time.
If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there
would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and the glory which
its three or four million people would enjoy. Yet it is from Europe that
have sprung that series of frightful nationalistic quarrels, originated by
the Teutonic nations in their rise to power, which we have seen in this
twentieth century and even in our own lifetime, wreck the peace and mar the
prospects of all mankind.
And what is the plight to which Europe has been reduced? Some of the
smaller States have indeed made a good recovery, but over wide areas a vast
quivering mass of tormented, hungry, care-worn and bewildered human beings
gape at the ruins of their cities and their homes, and scan the dark
horizons for the approach of some new peril, tyranny or terror. Among the
victors there is a babel of voices; among the vanquished the sullen silence
of despair. That is all that Europeans, grouped in so many ancient states
and nations, that is all that the Germanic races have got by tearing each
other to pieces and spreading havoc far and wide. Indeed but for the fact
that the great Republic across the Atlantic Ocean has at length realised
that the ruin or enslavement of Europe would involve their own fate as well,
and has stretched out hands of succour and of guidance, but for that the
Dark Ages would have returned in all their cruelty and squalor. Gentlemen,
they may still return.
