"Our idea is something different. We make another picture in our minds. We think that United Europe might be a better place to live in than either the Arctic or Antarctic. And that is why we, your visitors and guests, have come here from so many lands, speaking so many languages to accept the generous hospitalities of the Hague and Amsterdam and to try to take a step forward together in harmony with the policy of our freely elected governments towards reviving the old glories of Europe and enabling this famous Continent to resume its place as an independent and self-supporting member of a World Organization. As a part in this World Organization we hope that there will soon be formed a Council of Europe which will comprise the governments and peoples of as many European states as hold our convictions and accept the broad freedoms
of democratic life established on the freely-expressed will of the people in many places, though we make great allowances for difficulties in great populations acting through Parliamentary institutions. This is the Europe which we wish to see arise in so great a strength as to be safe from internal disruption or foreign inroads. We hope to reach again a Europe united but purged of the slavery of ancient, classical times, a Europe in which men will be proud to say, "I am a European".
We hope to see a Europe where men of every country will think as much of being a European as of belonging to their native land, and that without losing any of their love and loyalty of their birthplace. We hope wherever they go in this wide domain, to which we set no limits in the European Continent, they will truly feel "Here I am at home. I am a citizen of this country too". Let us meet together. Let us work together. Let us do our utmost—all that is in us—for the good of all. How simple it would all be, how crowned with blessings for all of us if that could ever come, especially for the children and young men and women now growing up in this tortured world. How proud we should all be if we had played any useful part in bringing that great day to come. And here I invoke the interest of the broad, proletarian masses. We see before our eyes scores of millions of humble homes in Europe and in lands outside which have been afflicted by war. Are they never to have a chance to thrive and flourish? Is the honest, faithful, breadwinner never to be able to reap the fruits of his labour? Can he never bring up his children in health and joy and with the hopes of better days? Can he never be free from the fear of foreign invasion, the crash of the bomb and the shell, the tramp of the hostile patrol, or what is even worse, the knock upon his door by the political police to take the loved one from the protection of law and justice, when all the time by one spontaneous effort of his will he could wake from all these nightmare horrors and stand forth in his manhood, free in the broad light of day?"
*Address given by Winston Churchill at the European rally in Amsterdam
(9 May 1948)*
this evening despite my 'no wine in the week vow'.
