The Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Will Y. Darling, in presenting the Freedom to Mr. Winston Churchill, said:
"The freedom of the city was in mediaeval days a very substantial reality; it was not just a word, nor is it merely a word today. If it no longer carries with it the solid and substantial privileges of the burghers of the Middle Ages it is still a very high and jealously guarded honour. It is, in fact, for the citizens of Edinburgh, the highest honour in their gift, and they have no way of showing any higher honour than the honour of conferring the freedom of the city upon a distinguished man or woman.
The freedom which Edinburgh can confer is not something which descends from the heavens as a free gift of nature - it is something which Edinburgh citizens of the past have fought for and won, claimed and maintained, and a freedom for which they are still fighting, and as surely will once more win.
In the distinguished roll of illustrious names are those of Walter Scott of Abbotsford, Earl Grey, Charles Dickens, Sir Robert Peel, Richard Cobden, William Gladstone, David Livingstone, Lord Palmerston, General Garibaldi, Lord Beaconsfield, General Grant, The Marquis of Salisbury, Lord Rosebery, Andrew Carnegie, H. M. Stanley, Lord Roberts, Lord Wolseley, Lord Kitchener, Lord Balfour, H. H. Asquith, David Lloyd George and other Prime Ministers of Great Britain and the Dominions, and most recently Mr. Winant, who is specially welcome today. These are great names - among the greatest in our history - writers, statesmen, soldiers, scientists and men of affairs. Our distinguished guest is one of a great line; but it will be agreed that he is unique in this respect, that, while almost all his predecessors received the freedom of the city for one supreme qualification, it is surely his peculiarly outstanding merit that he possesses at least one of the qualifications to which almost all his predecessors have a claim. Churchill's 'Savrola' challenges Disraeli's 'Tancred'; and Lord Rosebery's 'The Last Phase', that profound, historical study of the great Napoleon, makes no greater show on the shelves of the libraries than does that of the historian of the 'World Crisis'. A writer, then, but more than that. As a 'venturer' and explorer, the young man who knew India, the Sudan and Cuba and South Africa, meets David Livingstone and Stanley on equal terms. Not only popular writer, not only explorer, but I make bold to say as a statesman, Earl Grey and the Marquis of Salisbury would have found themselves in the presence of one certainly not inferior in the great affairs of state, and as a soldier and a sailor our honoured guest would be at ease with Garibaldi, with Grant, with Roberts and with Kitchener and with Lord Beatty. There is no aspect of human existence - and how far, varied, and far-reaching are the aspects of human existence which Mr. Churchill knows - which he has not visualised and adorned. He stands before us here today and before all the world, as the leader of his fellow-countrymen, as the acclaimed unshakable symbol of all the strength and purpose which is the allied nations at war. He has attained this, the highest position possibly which any man in the British Empire has ever attained, he has attained it by hard labour, by indomitable, unshakable purpose, by thought and painful travail, by ability and personality - by the sheer, irresistible force of his genius.
The citizens of Edinburgh honour Mr. Winston Churchill. Great men have arisen in the past to be the succour and the strength of the world; great men, under God's mercy, will arise in the future; but looking before and after, looking down the vast avenues, of time, this British people have found none greater than he in their greatest hour, and none who matches it more fittingly, more nobly, or more greatly."
In recognition of his distinguished career as soldier, writer, orator and statesman, and especially because of his inspiring and courageous leadership of the British people in what may be at once the finest and darkest days of their long history.
"I have never before been made a Freeman of any city, and though since the war I have been complimented by a number of invitations which I greatly value, your Freedom is the only one I have felt myself so far able to receive in the hard press of events. It seemed to me that Edinburgh, the ancient capital of Scotland, enshrined in the affection of the Scottish race all over the world, rich in memories and tradition, immortal in its collective personality, stands by itself, and therefore I am here today to be refreshed by your very great kindness and inspiration. and to receive the all too flattering tribute from my old friend, Willie Y. Darling, your Lord Provost.
The old quarrels, the age-old feuds which rent our island, have been ended centuries ago by the Union of the Crowns and by the happy fulfilment of the prophecy that wherever the Stone of Scone shall rest the Scottish race shall reign.
The whole British Empire, and, most of all, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, owes an inestimable debt to our King and Queen. In these years of trial and storm they have shared to the full the perils, the labours, the sorrows, and the hopes of the British nation. I have seen the King, gay, buoyant, and confident, when the stones and rubble of Buckingham Palace lay newly scattered in heaps upon its lawns. We even today are mourning the King's brother, who was killed on active service on a Highland hillside. You here in Scotland and in Edinburgh must especially rejoice in the charm and grace of a Scottish Queen whom Scotland has given to us all for this time of crisis.
I could not, as First Minister, come to Edinburgh, a city which has always been proud of its Royal connection, without expressing your sentiments of loyalty and devotion to our beloved Sovereign and his Consort, and paying them the tribute which their virtues and their actions alike deserve.
I come to you straight from a visit to the Fleet. I have spent the last few days going over a great many of our ships, some great, some small, some fresh from action in the Mediterranean, others from fighting their way through with the Russian convoys. I could not imagine a greater contrast between this Fleet in a harbour somewhere in Scotland and the Desert Army which I was visiting for two or three days some seven weeks ago.
The scene, the light, the colour, the elements, the uniforms, the weapons, all were utterly different, but there was one feature which was not different - the spirit was the same. The Desert Army was confident that it would stand an unbreakable barrier between Rommel and the Nile Valley, and the Fleet is sure that once again it will stand between a Continental tyrant and the dominion of the world.
I have myself some ties with Scotland which are to me of great significance - ties precious and lasting. First of all, I decided to be born on St. Andrew's Day, and it was to Scotland I went to find my wife, who is deeply grieved not to be here today through temporary indisposition. I commanded a Scottish battalion of the famous 21st Regiment for five months in the line in France. I sat for 15 years as the representative of "Bonnie Dundee," and I might be sitting for it still if the matter had rested entirely with me. But although I have found what I trust is a permanent happy home in the glades of Epping Forest, I still preserve affectionate memories of the banks of the Tay. Well, here you will admit are some ties to unite me to Scotland, and now today you have given me a new one which I shall value as long as I live.
We call ourselves in our grand alliance the United Nations. Here, indeed, in Scotland is an example of national unity. Our present Secretary of State, our good and faithful friend, Tom Johnston, has inaugurated a notable experiment in forming an unofficial All-Party Council of State of which every living ex-Secretary of State for Scotland is a member. Such brotherhood and comradeship have yielded excellent results.
From every quarter come reports that the people of Scotland are in good heart. They are also, I am glad to learn, in good health. Here, in the fourth year of the world war, more people in Scotland are getting three square meals than ever before was known. In Glasgow, the school medical authorities report that in the last year, 1941, the latest for which we have received the figures, the average net increase in the weight of school entrants above the figures for the five years 1935-9 was 1lb. And boys of 13 years of age were nearly 3lbs. heavier than those in the same period before the war. The whole country is pulling together as it has never done before in its history. Cruel blows like the loss of the original 51st Division in France have been borne with fortitude and silent dignity.
A new 51st Division has been born, and will sustain the reputation and avenge the fortunes of its forerunner. The air bombing was endured with courage and resource. In all the Services, air and land and sea, the merchant ships, in all the many forms of service which this great struggle has called forth, Scotsmen have gained distinction. You may indeed repeat with assurance the poet's lines:
'Gin dangers dare we'll thole our share,
Gie's but the weapons, we've the will
Beyont the main to prove again
Auld Scotland counts for something still.
When peaceful nations like the British and the Americans, very careless in peacetime about their defences, care-free unsuspecting nations, peoples who have never known defeat - improvident nations I will say, reckless nations, nations who despise the military art and thought war so wicked that it could never happen again when nations like these are set upon by highly organised, heavily armed conspirators, planning and calculating in secret for years on end, exalting war as the highest form of human effort, glorifying slaughter and aggression, prepared and trained to the last point science and discipline can carry them, is it not natural that the peaceful, unprepared, improvident should suffer terribly and that the wicked, scheming aggressors should have their reign of savage exaltation?
Ah! But that is not the end of the story. It is only the first chapter. If the great, peaceful Democracies could survive the first few years of the aggressors' attack, another chapter had to be written. It is to that chapter we shall come in due time.
It will ever be the glory of this island and its Empire that we stood alone for one whole year of mortal peril, and gained the time for the good cause to arm, to organise and slowly bring the conjoined, united irresistible forces of outraged civilisation to bear upon the criminals. That is our greatest glory.
Here in the West we have seen many savage, bestial acts, but nothing that has happened in the West so far can compare with the wholesale massacre, not only of soldiers, but of civilians and women and children which has characterised Hitler's invasion of Russia. In Russia and in his reigns of terror in Poland and Yugoslavia, tens of thousands have been murdered in cold blood by the German Army and by the special police battalions and brigades which accompany it everywhere and take a leading part in the frightful butchery perpetrated behind the front. For every one execution Hitler has ordered in the West he has carried out two hundred - it may be many more - in Eastern and Central Europe. On the first day after he entered Kiev he shot upwards of 54,000 persons.
I say to show weakness of any kind to such a man is only to encourage him to further atrocities. And you may be assured that no weakness will be shown.
The heroic defence of Stalingrad, the fact that the splendid Russian armies everywhere are intact, unbeaten, and unbroken, nay, counter-attacking with amazing energy along the whole front from Leningrad to the Caucasus Mountains, the fearful losses suffered by the German troops, the near approach of another Russian winter - all these grim facts, which cannot be concealed, cast their freezing shadow upon the German people already wincing under the increasing impact of British bombing.
The U-boat warfare still remains the greatest problem of the United Nations, but there is no reason whatever why it should not be solved by the prodigious measures of offence, of defence, and of replacement on which Britain, Canada, and, above all, the United States, are now engaged. The months of August and September have been, I will not say the best, but the least bad months since January. These months have seen the new building of merchant ships which substantially outweigh the losses.
They have seen the greatest tonnage of British bombs dropped upon Germany. They have covered the most numerous safe arrivals of United States troops in the British Isles. They have marked a definite growth of Allied air superiority over Germany, Italy, and Japan.
In these months, indeed in September, far away in the Pacific, the Australians, with our American Allies, have made a good advance in New Guinea. It is not my habit to encourage light or vain expectations, but these are solid and remarkable facts.
Surveying both sides of the account - the good and the bad with equal composure and coolness - we must see that we have reached a stern and sombre moment in the war, one which calls in a high degree for firmness of spirit and constancy of soul.
The excitement and the emotion of those great days when we stood alone unaided against what seemed overwhelming odds and, single-handed, saved the future of the world, are not present now. We are surrounded by a concourse of Governments and nations all of us bound together in solemn unbreakable alliance, bound together by ties not only of honour but of self-preservation. We are able to plan our slow but sure march onward. Deadly dangers still beset us. Weariness, complacency or discord, squabbles over petty matters, would mar our prospects.
We must all drive ourselves to the utmost limit of our strength. We must preserve and refine our sense of proportion. We must strive to combine the virtues of wisdom and of daring. We must move forward together, united and inexorable.
Thus with God's blessing the hopes which are now justified, which we are now entitled to feel, will not fail or wither. The light is broadening on the track, and the light is brighter, too. Among the qualities for which Scotland is renowned, steadfastness holds perhaps the highest place. Be steadfast, then, that is the message, which I bring to you, that is my invocation to the Scottish people here in this ancient capital city, one of whose burgesses I now have the honour to be. Let me use the words of your famous minstrel - he is here today - words which have given comfort and renewed strength to many a burdened heart:
'Keep right on to the end of the road. Keep right on to the end.'