Winston Churchill to the Canadian Senate

Author: Sir Winston Spencer Churchill

Date: December 30, 1941

Situation: Speech to the Canadian Senate and House of Commons, Ottawa

This is no time to speak of the hopes of the future, or the broader world which lies beyond our struggles and our victory. We have to win that world for our children. We have to win it by our sacrifices. We have not won it yet. The crisis is upon us....In this strange, terrible world war there is a place for everyone, man and woman, old and young; service in a thousand forms is open. There is no room now for the dilettante, the weakling, for the shirker, or the sluggard. The mine, the factory, the dockyard, the salt sea waves, the fields to till, the home, the hospital, the chair of the scientist, the pulpit of the preacher from the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honour; all have their part to play.