Monday, September 4, 1939

The night of the third day of September nineteen hundred and thirty-nine

When will you, words, be accurate enough, when will you be true enough, when will you be grand enough to express great feelings and events according to our will!
In this early September of the year nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, the most apt reflection of world events is the night on whose radio waves the image of the present appears.
(Germany bans listening to foreign radio stations under severe penalties. Dissemination of foreign radio messages is even punishable by death.) The whole of Europe sounds a mighty symphony of its languages: French, English, German, Polish.
French delivers its classic heroic appeal through the mouth of Daladier.
What would the barricades of Europe be without you, France?! What would the barricades of European spirit and freedom be without you, France! Europe sighed with relief. The banner of France waved above her. In Poland, in Warsaw, the crowds are crying out: Vive la France! Once again, all of Europe is calling:
Vive la France! The Marseillaise is heard through Europe again, sung by hundreds of thousands, millions! Once again France is in the mouths of thousands of Europeans. We are guilty before you, France, for you have bled countless times for the freedom of our spirit, for its evolution, and you will bleed again. We stand before you with guilt. At this moment, that feeling is overshadowed by the emotion and joy of your great resolve and determination. At this moment, that guilt is overshadowed by the intoxication of singing Marseillaise, admiration, enthusiasm and gratitude. To you, France, most beautiful and always sacrificed. At this moment, everything is overshadowed by the speech of a statesman whose school models were the styles of Corneille and Racine.
Post Parisien, Toulouse, Lille, France!

The French government and the War Ministry authorized the creation of a regular Czechoslovak army to fight on the French front. Heroes! If the name hero is used in different senses in peacetime, it has only one, and that is its primary meaning, in wartime. And if it belongs to all unknown soldiers doing their military duty, it belongs most to those who do it voluntarily. All those who have come under the Czechoslovak banner in France are heroes. Their sacrifice atones for all the reproaches we have ever uttered against France and which France could have uttered against us.
England spoke through the mouth of its King and Prime Minister Chamberlain. “Blessed is England”, as Master John Huss wrote in his letter. Mighty and blessed England!
Uvaga, uvaga!
My god, that's the anxious voice, that's the voice that reports the numbers, that's the voice that reports the air raids, that's the voice that reports the number of dead and wounded. My god, that is the sigh of bloodshed, destruction, despair, misery and death.
German, French and English voices explain the world history of these days and hours. They wrestle with each other. They convict each other of lying. Our descendants will read the truth in the history books. The truth?
When the living voices of tonight shall wander as shadows of printed words and ideas; when the living people of tonight shall be but shadows of words, it will be true – no – listen tonight to the symphony of the voices of Europe. Its history is being made, not yet written, its history is living, its history is just speaking, its history is beginning to bleed, to groan. Despairing, raging, hoping, fighting, struggling.
God be with Europe! You know what Europe is for us; it is not just countries and nations for us. Europe embodies for us the order of humanity, the order of justice, the order of freedom.