grievous consequence
what has been done and undone
futile intentions

It is the most grievous consequence which we have yet experienced of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last four years.

Four years of futile good intentions.

Four years of eager search for the line of least resistance.

Four years of uninterrupted retreat of US power.

Four years of neglect of US defenses.

Those are the features which I stand here to declare and which marked an improvident stewardship for which the United States has dearly to pay.

We have been reduced in those four years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it.

We have been reduced from a position where the very word “war” was considered one which would be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum.

We have been reduced from a position of safety and power.

Power to do good.

Power to be generous.

Reduced in four years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now …

This is paraphrased and adapted for today’s affairs of the world from a speech by Winston Churchill.

Mr. Churchill delivered his speech has part of the British Parliamentary Debate on the Munich Agreement on October 3, 1938.

Mr. Churchill was speaking about Great Britain and France and the efforts of the governments of those countries to maintain peace in Europe with Nazi Germany.

Those two countries working with Germany and France had signed an agreement that pretty much dissolved the country of Czechoslovakia and made it a part of Hitler’s Germany in the hope Hitler would be happy.

I adapted what Mr. Churchill to what the United States seems to face abroad after four years of the current administration of the Government of the United States.

I understand what the governments of Great Britain and France were trying to do.

I fail to understand.

I cannot grasp what the current administration is trying to do.

Mr. Churchill said:

“It is the most grievous consequence which we have yet experienced of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years-five years offutile good intention, five years of eager search forthe line of least resistance, five years of uninterruptedretreat of British power, five years of neglect of our air defences. Those are the features which I stand here to declare and which marked an improvident stewardship for which Great Britain and France have dearly to pay. We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word “war” was considered onewhich would be used only by persons qualifying fora lunatic asylum. We have been reduced from a position of safety and power–power to do good, power to be generous to a beaten foe, power to make terms with Germany, power to give her proper redress for her grievances, power to stop her arming if we chose, power to take any step in strength or mercy or justice which we thought right-reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now….“