Prince CharlesYour Royal Highness, Secretary Weinberger, Mrs. Weinberger, Judge Clark, Charles PriceYour Excellency, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I can think of no occasion during my years at No. 10 which has given me greater personal pleasure than to do honour tonight to Secretary Weinberger. [end p1]
Caspar WeinbergerCap, we are delighted that you and your wife are with us: and deeply happy for the reason that brings you here: the award of Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the British Empire, which Her Majesty The Queen will present to you tomorrow.
And it is a signal honour that His Royal Highness Prince CharlesThe Prince of Wales is with us to [end p2] lead our congratulations this evening.
Such awards are rare, indeed very rare. But with yours, we recognise a truly outstanding friend to Britain, a friend over many years but above all when we most needed friendship and support during the Falklands Campaign. [end p3]
For that friendship alone, we can never thank you enough. But our respect and affection for you and for your achievements goes much wider than that.
For seven years, you have been a tower of strength, not just to the United States but to the NATO Alliance as a whole. [end p4]
Your determination to see the West once again build up its defences so that we could negotiate for peace from a basis of strength: these were qualities which helped restore NATO's confidence and resolve.
You understood—in the words of Winston Churchill, whom I know you admired [end p5] greatly—that “an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping that it will eat him last.” You made sure that the crocodile went hungry.
You also had the vision to see that the West must always be ahead in new science and technology if our defence is to be sure. You have been a tireless champion of [end p6] research on the Strategic Defence Initiative.
Often you had to fight and fight hard for what you believe in. But however wearisome the battle, your monument is the greater security which all our people enjoy because you fought. For us you are a true knight—probably the most modest knight ever—but a [end p7] champion of all we believe in, of the liberty and justice which are our life-blood.
But in honouring you, Cap, we are also—and I know you would want it thus—we are also honouring America.
When historians look back over the post war years, [end p8]
—weighing the vast deployment of weaponry,
—the political tensions,
—the difficulties, apparently irreconcilable,
—between the free West and the communist East systems
—they will ask themselves the question: how was it that conflict was avoided? [end p9]
The answer, I am certain, is that it was in great part because the United States kept its nerve and held fast. Too often with abuse heaped on it from many quarters—sometimes even from within the Alliance itself—America has held firm to its basic doctrine, first set out by Harry Truman forty years ago, that liberty must be defended wherever and [end p10] whenever it is threatened.
And in the end, it was the dictators who backed down; who changed first their ways then, as we are even now seeing, their attitudes.
It has been said, and repeated so often that it has become a cliche, that the price of liberty is Eternal Vigilance. [end p11]
Would that it were so cheap!
The very nature of democracy—its slowness, its hesitations, its need to consult and balance, its reluctance to accord the military what they claim in time of peace meant that, inevitably, in the past that price had to be paid in blood. [end p12] Paid in the sad extinction of hope, of shattered expectations of so many families in both our countries.
Having never been invaded, you like us have made so many sacrifices in foreign fields. For we fight not only for the security of our land, not only for the spirit of our people, but for the freedom of all mankind. [end p13]
Men like those in the Eighth Air Force—and their predecessors, the Eagle Squadron, represented here tonight by Mr. Charles Sweeney—who came to Britain in 1942.
Today, through NATO, it is our purpose to ensure that any potential aggressor would know that he could never win against the [end p14] defensive might and resolve of our free peoples.
Today, we can welcome and encourage the changes that are taking place in the countries beyond the Iron Curtain, because whatever happens, our defence will still be sure.
Today, we honour the man who has done so much to give us that guarantee. [end p15] A man who is a visionary—but a realist. A thinker—but a man of action. A leader—but a man of the people.
And in honouring you, as a great American Secretary of State for Defence, and a great friend of Britain, we also say with heartfelt passion and respect: God Bless America.