At midnight, Churchill again wrote to Beaverbrook, this time in longhand and summoning the judgment of history: “You must not forget in the face of petty vexations the vast scale of events and the brightly-lighted stage of history upon which we stand.” He closed by quoting a remark that Georges Danton, a leader of the French Revolution, made to himself just before being guillotined in 1794: “ ‘Danton no weakness.’ ”
