I Have Nothing To Offer But

This was Churchill's first address to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, delivered on 13 May 1940 — just three days after he took office and on the same day Germany's massive western offensive through Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg was under way. The speech lasted under six minutes and asked Parliament to vote confidence in his new coalition government, which it did unanimously. Churchill later recalled that all his past life had felt like preparation for this moment. The phrase had a precedent: Theodore Roosevelt had used very similar language in an 1897 address to the U.S. Naval War College, and Churchill, who had an American mother and wide reading in military history, likely knew it.