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Women's Canadian Club. Toronto. 28th Nov. [1939]
I.
I have had the privilege of addressing Canadian Clubs up and down the Dominion, but this is the first time since I became Governor-General that I have addressed a Women's Canadian Club. But it was an old promise of mine to come one day to you in Toronto, and the fact that we are now at war makes no difference to that promise. Indeed, it makes it easier to fulfil. A Governor-General, as you know, is very limited in his choice of subjects. There are many matters on which he dare not touch, matters of controversy, above all, matters of party controversy. Politics in the ordinary sense are forbidden him, and that does not make it easier for a person like myself, who was a Member of Parliament at home, and to whom politics was a principal topic. So I am afraid - I am very much afraid - that in my many speeches since I came to Canada I may have sometimes bored my audience by harping on the same subjects. There is a story of a new minister in a Scottish village who preached his first sermon there, and an old woman in the congregation, a celebrated critic of sermons, was asked what she thought of him. Her answer was "I thocht nothing of him. He was neither edifyin' nor divertin' ". I fear that too often I have been neither edifying nor diverting!
But today there is one subject of profound topical interest of which a Governor-General is permitted to speak freely. It is the question of the war. He is at liberty to speak because whatever may be our differences of view on the incidents which led
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2.
up to the war I fancy there is very little difference of opinion on the necessity of winning that war. Now that we are in it we have to see it through. The issues have clarified themselves into something very simple which anyone can understand. We and our Allies are fighting to maintain decency and order in the world. No one has put it better than Mr. Churchill when he described the present rulers of Germany as gangsters who are trying to shoot their way out with their loot through the "G" men of civilisation. If we were defeated it would mean the loss in public life of all that we hold dear. But we are not going to be defeated.
To win we must have the determination to win. We must have courage, and we must have hope. We must keep a stout heart. That applies not only to our armed forces, but to every man, woman and child in this Dominion. In old days war was a contest of armies and navies. To-day it is a contest of peoples. In the last war it was the breakdown of Germany's national morale which led to her defeat. In this war it is the maintenance of our national morale, our civilian morale which will bring us victory.
So this afternoon I want to offer you a few reflections which should conduce, I think, to stoutness of heart and cheerfulness of spirit. We have to face great difficulties, but we have also great assets. We are living in a confused and tragic world, but from that very confusion and tragedy we may win certain shining benefits. Among oldfashioned people in Scotland I have often heard the advice given that when things look dark it is a good plan to "count your mercies". So I venture to offer for your consideration, and in order to cheer ourselves up, a few mercies which I think we can count.
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II.
First, as a student of history I want to remind you that in our long history we have lived under skies equally dark, and our forefathers did not lose heart. There are one or two special cases to remember. In March 1918 Germany had no eastern front to fight on, for Russia was in chaos, Rumania and Serbia were prostrate, and Bulgaria and Turkey were on her side. She could move every man from the east against the Allies in the west. She could get supplies of food and oil from the east, certainly as easily as she can get them today. Her people had been living for more than three years under a heavy war strain, on narrow rations and with an insufficient supply of war material. She was, indeed, very much in the position then in which she has begun the present war. What happened? Well, she attacked violently in the west, and Britain and France went through a very trying time. Presently the American armies were in the field beside us, and in seven months Germany was beaten to the ground. The situation of course is not quite the same today: today Germany has a powerful army of young men, and America is not in the field. But it was not only the pressure in the field that defeated her in 1918; it was even more the fact that the long strain had told upon her internal morale, and that the nerve of her people broke. There is precisely the same danger for her today.
Then cast your mind back to the beginning of last century after the battle of Austerlitz, when the dying Pitt said, "Roll up the map of Europe". Russia had "run out" and was an ally of our enemies. The whole of Europe was against us and it was under the iron heel of a great genius, Napoleon, compared to whom the present German leaders are the merest pygmies. But Britain did not lose heart. We stuck to our cause, we refused to make peace until tyranny had been defeated, and we won.
