And we shall not appease agressors

Seeing how the controversy about the supposedly offensive Danish cartoons rages on, I feel we should re-listen to an old Churchill speech of 1934 - the one in which he warns not to appease the budding agressor state of Nazi Germany. "A group of ruthless men preaching a gospel of intolerance, supressing all deviant opinion, preparing to terrorize whole civil populations into submission."

We shall not appease. We shall think, say, publish what we think is dear and true to us. We should not offend, either - but some people only need an excuse to be offended and get agressive - and those people just don't need to be catered to anymore. They can step outside, take their short fuse and light it there.

transcription: Winston Churchill speech, BBC - Nov 16, 1934

"Many think that the best way to escape war, is to dwell upon its horrors. <snip> This ought to be very useful in preventing us from attacking or invading any other country. But how would this help us, if we were attacked, or invaded ourselves? Would the invaders consent to sit down and listen to reasonable debate? Even if they did, I'm not so sure we might persuade them to go back quietly home.

They might say: 'It seems to me, you are rich - we are poor; you seem well fed - we are hungry; you've been victorious - we've been defeated; you have valuable colonies - we have none; you have your navy - where is ours?; you have had the past - let us have the future.' Above all, I fear, they would say: 'you are weak, and we are strong'.

Only a few hours away by air, there dwells a nation, <snip> whose people are being taught from childhood to think of war as a glorious exercise; and death in battle as the noblest fate for man. There is a nation, which has abandoned all its liberties in order to augment its collective strength. There is a nation, which with all its strenght and virtue, is in the grip of a group of ruthless men preaching a gospel of intolerance and racial pride - unrestrained by law, by parliament, or by public opinion.

In that country all pacifist speeches, all morbid war books are forbidden or suppressed, and their authors rigorously imprisoned. From their new Table of Commandments they have omitted 'Thou shalt not kill'.

It is but twenty years since these neighbors of ours fought almost the whole world. Now they are re-arming with the utmost speed. And ready to their hands is this new lamentable weapon of the air. With the new weapon has come a new method, or rather has come back the most brutish methods of ancient barbarism - namely, the possibility of compelling the submission of races by terrorising and torturing their civil population.

And worst of all, the more civilized a country is, the larger and more splendid its cities, the more intricate the structure of its social and economic life, the more it is vulnerable, the more it is at the mercy of those who may make it their prey.

These are facts - hard, grim indisputable facts. And in the light of these facts, I ask again: What are we to do?"