Not even when on June 4, after the evacuation from Dunkirk, the Prime Minister had made his resounding speech about fighting on in the hills and on the beaches; not even when on June 18, after Pétain had asked for an armistice, Churchill reiterated in the Commons Britain’s “inflexible resolve to continue the war” and in another one of his eloquent and memorable perorations concluded: Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say: “This was their finest hour.” These could be merely
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