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4.

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.

The truth is that we have come through many bad times, and
often any able and public-spirited men have lost heart. Early in
last century William Wilberforce thought the outlook for the country
so dark that he refused to marry. In the 'forties Lord Shaftesbury,
the great philanthropist, declared that "nothing could save the
British Empire from shipwreck". And the Duke of Wellington just
before his death thanked God that "he would be spared from seeing the
consummation of ruin that was gathering round." But the ordinary
citizen never took that view, and, because he did not, disaster never
came.

But I do not want to refer merely to famous historical
episodes. I want you to consider how hard and difficult life was in
earlier times for our own people, and how in the darkest moments they
never lost either their courage or their cheerfulness. The fact is
that in our own day, and in our fathers' day, life had become unbelievably
secure and easy - an ease and security which can scarcely be
paralleled except perhaps for a few decades in the early Roman Empire.