GREAT BRITAIN: Man of the Year

(5 of 5)

"Their Finest Hour." Great history makes great literature. Seven years after the Spanish Armada an Englishman wrote: This royal throne of kings, this scept'red isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. . . .

In times of action literature is the words of men of action. Afterward come the poets. To the small men of Britain in 1940 Winston Churchill spoke words that may live as long as Shakespeare's: Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say "This was their finest hour!"