I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget. . . we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat. . . All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. . . We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. . . Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.
Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows.