Theatre Royal Drury Lane

1914 – 1918

Actors, musicians, writers and workers for the stage
Who have given their lives for their country
Honour to the immortal dead that great white company of shining souls
Who gave their youth that the world might grow old in peace
Their name liveth for evermore
These nobly played their parts these heard the call
For god and king and home they gave their all
Since ye who pass in quest of happy hours
Behold the price at which those hours were bought
Strew here the fragrance of memorial flowers a silent tribute of a grateful thought

...every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender.

Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second—surrender.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: ... We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.

This land is secure. We are free. These things are worth fighting and dying for.