Onwards to Victory

London: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1944. First edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is the British first edition, first printing, of the fourth volume of Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill's war speeches, containing Churchill's speeches from 1943. Condition is very good. The blue cloth binding is clean and tight with sharp corners, bright spine gilt, and only light shelf wear to extremities. The contents are respectably bright with no previous ownership marks. Spotting is primarily confined to the first and final leaves and the page edges.

In this fourth volume of Here the oratory takes a more positive tone as Churchill and the Allies begin to anticipate victory. A little before mid-year, on 19 May 1943 Churchill gave his second address to the U.S. Congress. Seventeen long months of war had passed since his first, just after Pearl Harbor. Churchill cautioned, invoking, for his American audience, the grim memory of the prolonged outcome of the U.S. Civil War, "No one after Gettysburg doubted which way the dread balance of war would incline. Yet far more blood was shed after the Union victory at Gettysburg than in all the fighting which went before.” That theme of maintaining the momentum of urgency repeated throughout the year. On 9 November 1943 Churchill told the audience at the Lord Mayor’s Day Luncheon "We must not lose for a moment the sense and consciousness of urgency and crisis which must continue to drive us, even though we are in the fifth year of war… victory will certainly be won... But that does not mean that our war task is done.” Late November saw Churchill celebrate his 69th birthday at the Teheran conference with Roosevelt and Stalin.

Few books are as emblematic of Churchill’s literary and leadership gifts as his war speeches volumes. During his long public life, Winston Churchill played many roles worthy of note - Member of Parliament for more than half a century, soldier and war correspondent, author of scores of books, ardent social reformer, combative cold warrior, Nobel Prize winner, painter. But Churchill's preeminence as a historical figure owes most to his indispensable leadership during the Second World War, when his soaring and defiant oratory sustained his countrymen and inspired the free world. Of Churchill, Edward R. Murrow said: "He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle." When Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, it was partly “…for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” Between 1941 and 1946, Churchill's war speeches were published in seven individual volumes. The British first editions are visually striking, but were printed on cheap “War Economy Standard” paper and bound in coarse cloth. They proved highly susceptible to spotting, soiling, and fading, so the passage of time has been hard on most surviving first editions.

Reference: Cohen A194.1.a, Woods/ICS A101(a.1), Langworth p.223.