What Kind of a People Do They Think We Are? by Winston S. Churchill - 1942

London: The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, 1942. British edition, second state. Pamphlet. This item is from the personal collection of Churchill's bibliographer, Ronald I. Cohen. This is an unusually clean copy of the second state of the British first edition. This wartime speech pamphlet contains two famous addresses: (1) Churchill's speech of December 26, 1941 to a joint session of the U.S. Congress and (2) the famous "Some chicken, some neck!" speech of 30 December to both houses of the Canadian Parliament. In the days after the Japanese attack, the United States formally entered the Second World War, marking the end of Britain's solitary stand against Hitler's Germany, which it had sustained since the fall of France. Churchill immediately decided to travel to the United States, and on December 12, 1941 he boarded the battleship Duke of York and began the 10-day trip across the Atlantic - a perilous journey at a time when German U-Boats plagued the North Atlantic. Churchill's speech to Congress was sober, resolved, and eloquently defiant, but of course also featured the sparkle of Churchillian wit, which was irrepressible even in the dark hours of the war: "I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own." His speech was also an important personal introduction to the elected leaders he needed to embrace and sustain the alliance so vital to his nation. In his speech to the Canadian Parliament, Churchill was characteristically defiant: "When I warned them that Britain would fight alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, 'In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.' Some chicken; some neck." The pamphlet is wire-stitched, measures 9.5 inches tall x 7.5 inches wide, and is 8 pages in length. The text is printed in 3 columns. Here is the second state (differing from the first only by the appearance of the words "Price One Penny" at the bottom of the front page). Condition is very good. The pamphlet is clean and complete with no tears, losses, or previous ownership marks. We note a faint crease at the upper corner, light spotting and age toning to the covers, and a diagonal crease to the lower rear cover that is a printing error rather than a fold. Bibliographic reference: Cohen A165.1.b, Woods A86