Step-by-step explanation:
If we are now called upon to endure what they have been suffering, we shall emulate their courage, and if final victory rewards our toils, they shall share the gains, aye, and freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands; not one jot or tittle do we recede. Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians have joined their causes to our own. All these shall be restored.14
Here for the first time Churchill stops reporting on events and addresses themes which recur throughout all of his speeches. These themes are like leitmotifs which, taken together, spell out his political vision. They form a simple, coherent whole which could be expressed as five propositions:
(1) We face a monstrous evil which is a threat to the whole world.
(2) If we can stand up to it, we will save not only ourselves, but the whole of mankind.
(3) Our ultimate goal must be victory, for this is an evil so virulent that it must be utterly extinguished.
(4) The road to victory will be long and hard, and involve much pain and sorrow…
(5) …but if we support each other and stick together, we can do it.
This was the message he delivered again and again that summer: to Parliament, to the British people, to the occupied countries of Europe, and — crucially — to the United States.
Having conjured up the picture of a prostrate Europe, he ended by drawing all his themes together in a coda of 180 words. These words have given the Battle of Britain its name, though unlike the “Battle of France,” in the original transcript “battle” was referred to in the lower case, for it was not yet the title of an event.15 The words make it clear that whatever was to come it was not about a few aeroplanes having some dogfights.16 They also define an integral part of what it has meant to be British for the two generations after the one which heard it broadcast that summer evening — and perhaps, now, to a new generation facing another mortal foe: