Compromise, give-and-take, live-and-let-live, became a national habit. The freedom of the Press—a forebearance unnatural in any Government—was an Eng… - Arthur Bryant

The chairman of the Cromwell Association <nowiki>[</nowiki>Maurice Ashley<nowiki>]</nowiki> asks why Charles II's escape from the Battle of Worcester 300 years ago deserves commemoration. It is because in the days that followed Cromwell's victory poor and humble men, in the face of overwhelming power and in extreme peril, out of their faith in God and their loyalty to the Crown dared everything to save their King. Whatever may be our opinions of the characters of Cromwell and Charles, most of us are agreed that the hereditary Crown was infinitely worth saving. The symbolic faith and courage of that little woodland community around Boscobel belong to the proud annals of our history as much as Cromwell's genius, and after the lapse of three centuries there is room in our pride and gratitude for both.

The key to a nation's future is in her past. A nation that loses it has no future. For men's deepest desires—the instrument by which a continuing society moulds its destiny—spring from their own inherited experience. We cannot recreate the past, but we cannot escape it. It is in our blood and bone. To understand the temperament of a people, a statesman has first to know its history.

I believe that the British unilateral guarantee of Poland's independence—though not necessarily, as you wisely point out, the integrity of her present Versailles frontiers in perpetuity—constitutes the first real chance for the Prime Minister's policy of appeasement to obtain the unanimous support of his countrymen. The latter are so constituted that they will never accede permanently to what is demanded of them by force. Something stubborn and undefeatable has always risen in the English consciousness at the sound of a threat. And the Germans, like ourselves a strong race, are so constituted that they can never respect arguments that seem based on fear or weakness. The Prime Minister has now placed our relationships on a new and realist footing. A realization in both countries of what will inevitability produce war, coupled with a readiness to seek an adjustment of existing differences by every other means, is now attainable. It offers a fresh possibility of an Anglo-German understanding—not now, perhaps, but in the future. It is worth trying, for the alternative is the almost certain destruction of our common civilization.