Re:http://www.famous-speeches-and-speech-topics.info/famous-speeches/winston-churchill-speech-the-few.htm
August 20, 1940
Almost 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. 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. Although this war is in fact only a (continuation) of the last, very great differences in its character are apparent. In the last war millions of men (fought) by hurling (enormous) masses of steel at one another. "Men and shells" was the cry, and prodigious (slaughter) was the consequence.
In this war nothing of this kind has yet appeared. It is a conflict of strategy, of (organisation), of technical apparatus, of science, mechanics, and morale. The British casualties in the first 12 months of the Great War amounted to 365,000. 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. 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.
The slaughter is only a small fraction, but the (consequences) to the belligerents have been even more deadly. We have seen great countries with powerful armies dashed out of coherent existence in a few weeks. 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.
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. 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. 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.
There is another more (obvious) difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are (engaged), not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women, and children. The fronts are everywhere. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is (fortified). Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same (courage). These are great and distinctive changes from what many of us saw in the struggle of a quarter of a century ago.
There seems to be every reason to believe that this new kind of war is well suited to the (genius) and the resources of the British nation and the British Empire and that, once we get properly equipped and properly started, a war of this kind will be more favourable to us than the sombre mass slaughters of the Somme and Passchendaele. If it is a case of the (whole) nation fighting and suffering together, that ought to suit us, because we are the most united of all the nations, because we entered the war upon the national will and with our eyes open, and because we have been nurtured in freedom and (individual) responsibility and are the products, not of (totalitarian) uniformity but of tolerance and variety.
If all these qualities are turned, as they are being turned, to the arts of war, we may be able to show the enemy quite a lot of things that they have not (thought) of yet. Since the Germans drove the Jews out and lowered their technical standards, our science is definitely ahead of theirs. Our (geographical) position, the command of the sea, and the friendship of the United States enable us to draw resources from the whole world and to (manufacture) weapons of war of every kind, but especially of the superfine kinds, on a scale hitherto practised only by Nazi Germany.