Eamon de Valera: Among the nations

Eamon de Valera gave this speech regarding Ireland among the nations at the opening of the Athlone Broadcasting station.

Ireland has much to seek from the rest of the world, and much to give back in return, much that she alone can give. Her gifts are the fruit of special qualities of mind and heart, developed by centuries of eventful history. Alone among the countries of Western Europe, she never came under the sway of Imperial Rome. When all her neighbours were in tutelage, she was independent, building up her own civilisation undisturbed. When Christianity was brought to her shores it was received with a joy and eagerness, and held with a tenacity of which there is hardly such another example.

Since the period of her missionary greatness, Ireland has suffered a persecution to which for cruelty, ingenuity and persistence there is no parallel. It did not break -- it strengthened -- the spirit and devotion of her people and prepared them for the renewal of their mission at a time when it is of no ‘less vital importance to the world than was the mission of the Irish saints of the seventh and eighth centuries to the world of their day.

Next to her services to religion, Ireland’s greatest contribution to the welfare of humanity has been the example of devotion to freedom which she has given throughout seven hundred years. The invaders who came to Ireland in the twelfth century belonged to a race that had already subjugated England and a great part of Western Europe. Like the Norsemen before them, it was in Ireland that they met the most serious resistance -- a resistance which was continued generation after generation against the successors of the first invaders until our own time, a resistance which will inevitably continue until the last sod of Irish soil is finally freed.

The Irish language is one of the oldest, and, from the point of view of the philologist, one of the most interesting in Europe. It is a member of the Indo-European family, principal of the Celtic group, of which the other two dialects are ancient Gaulish, which has come down to us only in inscriptions, and Brythonic, represented today by Welsh and Breton. Irish is closely related to Greek and Sanscrit, and still more closely to Latin.

The tradition of Irish learning -- the creation of the monastic and bardic schools -- was not wholly lost even during the darkest period of the English occupation. So far as the law could do it, education was made impossible for the Catholic population at home, but Irish scholarship was kept alive in the colleges for Irish ecclesiastics in Louvain, Rome, Salamanca, Paris and elsewhere on the Continent. In Ireland itself the schools of poetry survived in some places until the beginning of the eighteenth century, maintaining to the end their rigorous discipline. The "hedge schools," taught by wandering scholars, frustrated in a measure the design to reduce the people to illiteracy, and kept the flame of knowledge alight, however feebly, throughout the island.

Anglo-Irish literature, though far less characteristic of the nation than that produced in the Irish language, includes much that is of lasting worth. Ireland has produced in Dean Swift perhaps the greatest satirist in the English language; in Edmund Burke probably the greatest writer on politics; in William Carleton a novelist of the first rank; in Oliver Goldsmith a poet of rare merit. Henry Grattan was one of the most eloquent orators of his time -- the golden age of oratory in the English language. Theobald Wolfe Tone has left us one of the most delightful autobiographies in literature. Several recent or still living Irish novelists and poets have produced work which is likely to stand the test of time. The Irish theatre movement has given us the finest school of acting of the present day, and some plays of high quality.

Ireland’s music is of a singular beauty. Based on pentatonic scale its melodies reach back to a period anterior to the dawn of musical history. It stands pre-eminent amongst the music of the Celtic nations. It is characterised by perfection of form and variety of melodic content. It is particularly rich in tunes that imply exquisite sensitiveness. The strange fitfulness of the lamentations and love songs, the transition from gladness to pathos, have thrilled the experts, and made them proclaim our music the most varied and the most poetical in the world. Equal in rhythmic variety are our dance tunes -- spirited and energetic in keeping with the temperament of our people.

I have spoken at some length of Ireland’s history and her contributions to European culture, because I wish to emphasise that what Ireland has done in the past she can do in the future. The Irish genius has always stressed spiritual and intellectual rather than material values. That is the characteristic that fits the Irish people in a special manner for the task, now a vital one, of helping to save Western civilisation. The great material progress of recent times, coming in a world where false philosophies already reigned, has distorted men’s sense of proportion; the material has usurped the sovereignty that is the right of the spiritual. Everywhere today the consequences of this perversion of the natural order are to be seen. Spirit and mind have ceased to rule. The riches which the world sought, and to which it sacrificed all else, have become a curse by their very abundance.

In this day, if Ireland is faithful to her mission, and, please God, she will be, if as of old she recalls men to forgotten truths, if she places before them the ideals of justice, of order, of freedom rightly used, of Christian brotherhood -- then, indeed, she can do the world a service as great as that which she rendered in the time of Columcille and Columbanus, because the need of our time is in no wise less.

You sometimes hear Ireland charged with a narrow and intolerant Nationalism, but Ireland today has no dearer hope than this: that, true to her own holiest traditions, she may humbly serve the truth and help by truth to save the world.

Philippe Pétain: I need your confidence

Philippe Pétain gave this speech via radio to the French people declaring a new government with him having complete control.

Immense tasks face France. One has only to stop and think of the refugees and the supply problem to estimate their gravity and scope. The nation’s communications must be restored. Each man must be returned to his hearth and his job.

In these dark days, after France has been forced to the ground militarily, new trials have been inflicted upon her.

England, after a long alliance, has in a most opportunistic manner attacked our partially disarmed and immobilized warships in our ports. Nothing could justify that aggression. If England thought we would give our fleet to Germany, she was wrong.

The fleet received orders to defend itself and did so valiantly, despite the inequality of the battle.

France stands alone, attacked today by England for whom she consented to many severe sacrifices.

We have a most diflicult task to accomplish for which I need your confidence.

I have formed a new government composed of twelve Ministers who will be assisted by general secretafies taken from the principal services of the State. Governors will be in charge of the twelve large Provinces.

Power will thus find itself centralized and decentralized simultaneously. Officials will not be subjected to too much supervision. They will be free to operate and quicker to have more responsibility for their acts.

In order to regulate certain questions in a better manner, the government is preparing a seat for itself in the occupied territories. For that reason we have requested that Versailles and the ministerial quarters in Paris be vacated for us.

We must apply ourselves to create an elite corps without any other consideration than their capacity to command.

Labor is France’s supreme resource.

International capitalism and socialism exploited and degraded France. Both participated in preliminaries of the war. We must create a new order in which we no longer admit them.

We shall renounce neither profit, which is a powerful inducement, nor savings. Gains will remain as recompense for both labor and investment.

Your work will be defended, your families will have the respect and protection of the nation.

We must recreate lost confidence. The French family will remain the depositary for France’s long and honorable history.

We know that youth must live and draw its strength from the open air which will prepare it for life’s battles. We must see to that.

Let us give ourselves to France; she always has led her people to greatness.

Paul Reynaad: France will survive

Paul Reynaad gave this speech during the Nazi successful invasion of France.

In the distress fallen upon the fatherland one thing above all should be said. At the moment when fortune overwhelms them, I wish to cry out to the world the heroism of the French Armies, the heroism of our soldiers, the heroism of our chiefs.

I have seen arrive from the battle, men who had not slept in five days, harassed by airplanes, fatigued by long marches and heavy combats.

These men, whose nerves the enemy had thought broken, had no doubt about the final issue of the war. They had no doubt about the future of the fatherland.

The heroism of the armies of Dunkirk has been exceeded in the fighting from the sea to the Argonne. The soul of France is not broken.

Our race does not allow itself to be beaten down by invasion. How many of these invasions the soil on which we live has gone through in the course of the centuries; our race has always thrown back or dominated the invaders.

The world must know of the sufferings of France. The world must know of what they owe her. The hour has come for them to pay their debt.

The French Army has been the vanguard of the army of the democracies. It has sacrificed itself, but in losing this battle it has dealt telling blows to the common enemy. The hundreds of tanks destroyed, airplanes shot down, losses in men, the synthetic gasoline factories and planes -- all that explains the present state of morale of the German people despite their victories.

France, wounded, has the right to turn to other democracies and to say: "We have claims on you." None of these with a sense of justice can deny this.

But it is one thing to approve and another thing to act. We know what a high place ideals hold in the life of the great American people. Will they hesitate still to declare themselves against Nazi Germany?

You know that I have demanded it of President Roosevelt. I have sent him tonight a new and final appeal.

Each time that I have asked the President of the United States to increase in all forms the assistance permitted by American law, he has generously complied, and it has been approved by his people.

But today we are at a more advanced point. Today, the life of France is at stake, at least France’s essence of life. Our fight, each day more painful, has no further sense if in continuing we do not see even far away the hope of a common victory growing.

The superiority and quality of British aviation increases. It is necessary that clouds of war planes from across the Atlantic come to crush the evil force that dominates Europe.

Despite our reverses the power of the democracies remains immense. We have the right to hope that the day is coming when all that power will be placed in force. That is why we maintain hope in our hearts. That is also why we have wished France to keep a free government and have left Paris.

It was necessary to prevent Hitler from suppressing the legal government and declaring to the world that France had only a puppet government, in his pay, like those he has attempted to constitute here, there and everywhere.

In the great trials of their history our people have known days when they were troubled by defeatist counsel. It is because they never abdicated that they were great.

No matter what happens in the coming days, the French are going to suffer. May they be worthy of the past of their nation. May they become brothers. May they unite about their wounded fatherland.

The day of resurrection will come!