Stanley Baldwin: Quotes about the world

“To-day when we think of Empire we think of it primarily as an instrument of world peace.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to a dinner given by the Province of Ontario (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 91-92.
1927
Context: There is no precedent for the British Commonwealth of Nations... we have wrought for ourselves a common tradition which transcends all local loyalties and binds us as one people. The Empire of our dreams, if not always of our deeds, is compacted of great spiritual elements— freedom and law, fellowship and loyalty, honour and toleration... To-day when we think of Empire we think of it primarily as an instrument of world peace.

World , Peace , Thinking

“The brotherhood of man to-day is often denied and derided and called foolishness, but it is, in fact, one of the foolish things of the world which God has chosen to confound the wise, and the world is confounded by it daily. We may evade it, we may deny it; but we shall find no rest for our souls, or will the world until we acknowledge it as the ultimate wisdom. That is the message I have tried to deliver as Prime Minister in a hundred speeches.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 166-167.
1937
Context: The torch I would hand to you, and ask you to pass from hand to hand along the pathways of the Empire, is a Christian truth rekindled anew in each ardent generation. Use men as ends and never merely as means; and live for the brotherhood of man, which implies the Fatherhood of God. The brotherhood of man to-day is often denied and derided and called foolishness, but it is, in fact, one of the foolish things of the world which God has chosen to confound the wise, and the world is confounded by it daily. We may evade it, we may deny it; but we shall find no rest for our souls, or will the world until we acknowledge it as the ultimate wisdom. That is the message I have tried to deliver as Prime Minister in a hundred speeches.

Wisdom , God , World , Soul

“But our race is not a raw and untried race. The country, true to its finest traditions, kept its head, and by keeping its head won the admiration, the reluctant admiration, of the world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926) on the General Strike, quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 159.
1926
Context: The Government took emergency measures to control food supplies, to commandeer all forms of transport, to preserve order, and to stop the export of such coal as might be in the ports. Now into those few hours there were thus crowded events of a staggering character, and, had they taken place among a less disciplined people than our own people, riot and revolution would have quickly followed. But our race is not a raw and untried race. The country, true to its finest traditions, kept its head, and by keeping its head won the admiration, the reluctant admiration, of the world.

World , Country

“No Government in this country to-day, which has not faith in the people, hope in the future, love for his fellow-men, and which will not work and work and work, will ever bring this country through into better days and better times, or will ever bring Europe through or the world through.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in the House of Commons (16 February 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 59-60.
1923
Context: I am myself of that somewhat flabby nature that always prefers agreement to disagreement... When the Labour Party sit on these benches, we shall all wish them well in their effort to govern the country. But I am quite certain that whether they succeed or fail there will never in this country be a Communist Government, and for this reason, that no gospel founded on hate will ever seize the hearts of our people— the people of Great Britain. It is no good trying to cure the world by spreading out oceans of bloodshed. It is no good trying to cure the world by repeating that pentasyllabic French derivative, "Proletariat." The English language is the richest in the world in thought. The English language is the richest in the world in monosyllables. Four words, of one syllable each, are words which contain salvation for this country and for the whole world, and they are "Faith," "Hope," "Love," and "Work." No Government in this country to-day, which has not faith in the people, hope in the future, love for his fellow-men, and which will not work and work and work, will ever bring this country through into better days and better times, or will ever bring Europe through or the world through.

Love , Men , People , World

“There is no country…where there are not somewhere lovers of freedom who look to this country to carry the torch and keep it burning bright until such time as they may again be able to light their extinguished torches at our flame. We owe it not only to our own people but to the world to preserve our soul for that.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at University of Durham to the Ashridge Fellowship, as quoted in The Times (3 December 1934); also in Christian Conservatives and the Totalitarian Challenge, 1933-40 by Philip Williamson, in The English Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 462 (June 2000)
1934

People , World , Soul , Lovers

“It proved the stability of the whole fabric of our own country, and to the amazement of the world not a shot was fired. We were saved by common sense and the good temper of our own people.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926) on the General Strike, quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 167-168.
1926
Context: It may have been a magnificent demonstration of the solidarity of labour, but it was at the same time a most pathetic evidence of the failure of all of us to live and work together for the good of all. I recognize the courage that it took on the part of the leaders who had taken a false step to recede from that position unconditionally... It took a great deal more courage than it takes their critics now, who are blaming them for not going straight on, whatever happened. But if that strike showed solidarity, sympathy with the miners— whatever you like— it showed something else far greater. It proved the stability of the whole fabric of our own country, and to the amazement of the world not a shot was fired. We were saved by common sense and the good temper of our own people.

People , World , Sense , Country

“The best way in which you can develop a true national feeling and put your own country in the pride of place which belongs to her is to do it in communion with other nations and with the sole object of improving the world at large.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the St. David's Day Banquet in Cardiff (1 March 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 46-47.
1927
Context: ... that chauvinistic spirit which so often has been the curse of modern Europe. The best way in which you can develop a true national feeling and put your own country in the pride of place which belongs to her is to do it in communion with other nations and with the sole object of improving the world at large. It is not from disillusionment we have suffered since the War; we are taking a more sober view both of ourselves and of the world... Nationalism can take on some very ugly shapes. It looks as if as many crimes will be committed in its name as in the name of Religion or of Liberty. Indeed the source of the trouble is that Nationalists are apt to assume the garments of Religion... Love of one's country has been perverted into hatred of our neighbour's country by the preaching of lop-sided intellectuals, who themselves generally manage to escape the martyrdom they provide for others.

World , Way , Feeling , Country

“It is to moralise the world that we all desire.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1923/jul/23/military-expenditure-and-disarmament in the House of Commons (23 July 1923).
1923
Context: ... some of those to-day who are loudest in their protestations of international pacifism are loudest in their protestations that nothing but a class war can save society. No truer word was ever said by a philosopher than was said by Kant, a century ago or more, that we are civilised to the point of wearisomeness, but before we can be moralised we have a long way to go. It is to moralise the world that we all desire.... We have to remember one more thing besides that, that since the War we must not make the mistake of thinking that what may be war weariness is necessarily an excess of innate good will, and we cannot help noting that there has arisen in Europe, in the few years since the peace, a strong local feeling in different places of an extreme nationalism which, unless corrected, may bear in what is not of itself an evil thing the seeds of much future peril for the peace and harmony of Europe.

World

“We have demonstrated to the world in actual practice that difficulties can be resolved by discussion as they cannot be resolved by force.”

Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from London (16 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 120-121.
1937
Context: When we look round and consider the state of the world to-day, we see on every side bewilderment and doubt... I am no pessimist; I believe that in the end the countries of the world will find peace and prosperity— but that road will be a long and a hard one. For such a journey... above all, there is need of leadership. No one country— no group of countries— is so qualified to provide that leadership as the British Empire... I say this with no idea that we are necessarily better than other people, but because of our experience. For we, the peoples of the Empire, in our relations with one another, have set an example of mutual co-operation in the solution of our problems, such as, I believe, no group of nations has ever before achieved. We have demonstrated to the world in actual practice that difficulties can be resolved by discussion as they cannot be resolved by force.

World

“England is the natural home of liberty and free institutions, and in her endeavour to secure these blessings for the world no country ought to be quicker than she in acknowledging her debt to Hellas.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the annual meeting of the British School at Athens in London (2 November 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 205.
1926
Context: September of the year 490 B. C. was to my mind a more cardinal moment of fate for Europe than August 1914. Western civilization... was saved in its infancy at Marathon, and ten years later by Leonidas and by the men of Salamis... had it not been for that decade there would have been nothing to prevent Eastern Europe being orientalized and the ultimate fight for the hegemony of Europe would have been left to the Persians and the Carthaginians. But for the Greeks there would have been no civilization as we know it, and we should all have been dark-skinned people with long noses... England is the natural home of liberty and free institutions, and in her endeavour to secure these blessings for the world no country ought to be quicker than she in acknowledging her debt to Hellas.

World , Home , Nature , Country

“This massing of huge armaments on the Continent, even the work that we are doing—the money would be far better used for the progress of the world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 44-45.
1936
Context: There can be no such thing in the long run as the prosperity of an isolated nation... until the trade of the world once more begins to move from one country to another and goods can be exchanged and paid for— until that happens there is no permanency to the security we have gained. Does not that bring us back to this, that while we all know that we have got to go on, and go on quickly, with this matter of armaments, there is driven into us once more the mad folly of Europe to-day in the expenditure she is making on armaments at the sacrifice of her international trade? We have to do what we can in our conversations with foreign countries to show the folly of this, which, if protracted too long, may bring ruin to us all. Therefore we have still to hold on to the faith that sooner or later it may be possible once again to discuss the reduction of armaments. If and when that time comes we must all of us throw our weight into the effort. This massing of huge armaments on the Continent, even the work that we are doing— the money would be far better used for the progress of the world.

Money , World

“I do not think there is any single thing more important for our people, and for those who form public opinion, than to keep our people immune, so far as they can be so kept, from the virus of either Communism or Fascism. Our constitution has been evolved… There are some people who speak wildly and loosely about sudden and fundamental changes. Look out for them, and remember that our party, full of ideas of progress to-day as any other party that exists, has always stood, in Disraeli's words, "for the maintenance of the Constitution."… any attempt at sudden constitutional changes of a fundamental nature would not be maintaining the Constitution… the whole virtue of our people… has been the way in which we have adapted ourselves, and adapted the instruments that we use to give effect to our wishes; and we have adapted ourselves without bloodshed and without hatred among ourselves. Far, far the most important thing that we have to do is to keep this country at least… secure from those strange crises that to-day are rushing round the world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Bewdley Unionist Association in Worcester (10 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 102-104.
1937

People , World , Way , Communication

“For Greek democracy failed, and the reasons for its failure are full of instruction. The great ruling ideas which the Greeks gave to the world, ideas which England later was to absorb and spread over a quarter of the globe, freedom and self-government, social equality and civic patriotism, these were corrupted by demagogues and flatterers of the people. It was so fatally easy to think that freedom meant doing what you like, that one man was not only as good as another but equally able to fill any office whatsoever, that majorities could do no wrong, that you could make Utopian laws for your own country without regard to what other nations or other empires were doing…Freedom of speech was stifled and public men who refused to advocate pleasures for the public multitude were banished. Politicians rivalled one another in bribing the electorate.”

Stanley Baldwin

The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 35-36.
1930

Men , People , Pleasure , World

“When we speak of Empire, it is in no spirit of flag-wagging…we feel that in this great inheritance of ours, separated as it is by the seas, we have yet one home and one people…great as the material benefits are, we do not look primarily to them. I think deep down in all our hearts we look to the Empire as the means by which we may hope to see that increase of our race which we believe to be of such inestimable benefit to the world at large; the spread abroad of people to whom freedom and justice are as the breath of their nostrils, of people distinguished, as we would fain hope and believe, above all things, by an abiding sense of duty. If ever the day should come when an appeal to that sense of duty falls on deaf ears among our own kin, that day indeed would be the end of our country and of our Empire, to which you and I have dedicated our very lives.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 71-72.
1924

People , World , Justice , Hope

“The 1922 Club gave me a dinner in the House the other night and I think I had a great success…I had just a note or two to keep me right. I said there were some who doubted whether I was a dyed-in-the-wool Tory. I told them I wore Tory colours in my pram in the 1868 election. My father voted Whig then, but our cook was a Tory and she saw to my politics. For 94 years a Tory had represented Bewdley. I told them of my fight at Kidderminster, how I had come back from a visit to the United States a protectionist, how we were stirred by Joseph Chamberlain's tariff campaign, how we blundered badly over the Taff Vale decision. How when the war ended we were in a new world and how class conscious and revolutionary it was; how I felt that our Party was being destroyed and how I determined to do what I could to rescue it. I did not mention L[loyd] G[eorge] or Winston [Churchill]. Then in 1931 we conformed to the King's wish and all my colleagues agreed with me in doing so. I then touched on German rearmament and claimed that we could not have got this country to rearm one moment earlier than we did.”

Stanley Baldwin

Conversation with Thomas Jones (22 May 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 204.
1936

War , World , Thinking , Decision

“Bewdley, as most of you know was in distant times a sanctuary town to which a man, whatever his sins, might flee and be safe from justice. So, whatever the rude waves of the outside world buffet me with more than usual vigour, I have only to remember that in Bewdley, there is sanctuary even for a Prime Minister…I have never failed to find in my own country understanding, sympathy and support, and even when life seems to most difficult and the fences in front unclimbable, I can turn back in memory and recollection to this peaceful spot by the side of the river where I first drew breath and in the memory of which I am able to draw strength. There could have been no more typical English surroundings in which to cherish the earliest memories. I remember as a child, looking up the river from the bridge into that mysterious and romantic land of Shropshire, so close to us, from which my people came only three generations before and watching the smoke of the train running along the little railway through places bearing names like Wyre Forest, Cleobury Mortimer, Neen Sollars and Tenbury - names steeped in romance and redolent of the springtime of an England long ago passed but whose heritage is ours.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Bewdley (8 August 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 10-11.
1925

Life , People , World , Peace

“There is no greater need in the world, abroad and at home, than peace, peace from the warfare of arms and peace of spirit. Those are the things I intended to fight for during the time that I am Prime Minister, whether that time be long or short, and it is with that object—the object of peace above and before all things.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Philip Scott College (27 September 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 157.
1923

World , Peace , Home , Time

“We know ourselves what difficult times we live in. We know equally, and we are conscious of the fact, that with us—all of us at home and overseas—there rests the responsibility whether this form of government will remain, or whether it will fail. It is therefore good that we who meet from all corners of the world to take counsel with one another, should, at any rate among ourselves, hold this torch of freedom alight, and alive, until other nations come to see our ways.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Empire Parliamentary Association's Conference in Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), pp. 5-6.
1935

World , Way , Home , Freedom

“It became evident to me long before the war was over that the effect of it, which would hit this country hardest in the years immediately succeeding, was the tragedy of the loss of the men who were just qualifying and getting ready to be the leaders of our younger men…There is nothing in the first twenty years after the war that can make good to this country the loss of so many men of that age. And that was an additional reason why we men who were middle-aged already when the war began should have banded ourselves together by the time the war ended under a vow to our better selves that we would give for the rest of our lives, as a thank-offering to the dead, nothing but the best services we could render to our country. It has become our lot not to seek the ease that we might legitimately seek, but to carry on to the end and help the next generation that is coming along—the generation that was too young to fight—help that to take its place as and when the time comes. It is, and it will be, a tremendous burden on the older men, but it is their proud contribution—the giving of the best they can to help a broken and a shattered world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 63-64.
1925

Men , War , Age , World

“I have often thought, with reference to the late War…that it has shown the whole world how thin is the crust of civilisation on which this generation is walking. The realisation of that must have come with an appalling shock to most of us here. But more than that. There is not a man in this House who does not remember the first air raids and the first use of poisoned gas, and the cry that went up from this country. We know how, before the War ended, we were all using both those means of imposing our will upon our enemy. We realise that when men have their backs to the wall they will adopt any means for self-preservation. But there was left behind an uncomfortable feeling in the hearts of millions of men throughout Europe that, whatever had been the result of the War, we had all of us slipped down in our views of what constituted civilisation. We could not help feeling that future wars might provide, with further discoveries in science, a more rapid descent for the human race. There came a feeling, which I know is felt in all quarters of this House, that if our civilisation is to be saved, even at its present level, it behoves all people in all nations to do what they can by joining hands to save what we have, that we may use it as the vantage ground for further progress, rather than run the risk of all of us sliding in the abyss together.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1923/jul/23/military-expenditure-and-disarmament in the House of Commons (23 July 1923).
1923

Men , War , People , World