Vice-Regal Saint: "The Subtle Corruption of the Cynics"
Elizabeth in 1957, at 31, during her Christmas address, the first time the traditional message was televised.
THE MONARCHY MEETS YOUTUBE. Featuring the 1957 Christmas Broadcast, footage from the Queen Mother's Wedding in 1923 and the 1953 Coronation. While media reports have emphasized the historic significance of the 1957 broadcast, the first to be made on television, its most striking aspect is the text itself. Her Majesty's Christmas addresses have sometimes been criticized as overly cautious, meditations on unquestioned truisms. This is too harsh. Being Head of State her comments must carry their message in a subtle and non-political way; their relevance being in no way diminished by this necessity. Below are some choice passages from the address:
But it is not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.
At this critical moment in our history we will certainly lose the trust and respect of the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth.
Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.
It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult. That is why we can take a pride in the new Commonwealth we are building.
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9 comments:
What an incredible broadcast. Her Majesty's message is not so subtle there is it. "We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics..." I wonder how the piercing vitality of such a statement would go over these days. If only 2007 will be like 1957, her 50th Xmas television broadcast. If only.
Damn. YouTube will not allow me to imbed the video. Thanks for taking notes, Kipling. This one's a keeper.
Her Majesty has done a better job utilising YouTube than any politician I have seen. Hardly surprising, of course
It just ticked over to Christmas Day here, so Merry Christmas one and all. May Father Christmas smite the republicans down with righteous fury.
How amusing! I had been readying a Christmas Day post with the video embedded, too. I think it an extraordinarily touching and eloquent address, for many reasons - not least because it reminds us of the whole world which stands between Now and Then. Only 50 years, but a gulf, an absolute gulf, in everything but chronology, now exists between us and Her Majesty of 1957. She could never dare say any of those things now - even though they are all the more necessary - and it would be a minor scandal (not to say a bemusing thing to most of her subjects) to quote The Pilgrim's Progress. The common Christian imagination has disappeared, swallowed up in the 1960s. She was 3 years, then, from that most miserable of disasters; if the talk had been given from the deck of the Titanic on a cold night in 1912 it could hardly be more laced with sorrow in the viewing of it now.
Still. Only 50 years separate us. I hope in 2057 we will have rather turned things around a bit.
Merry Christmas, Happy Christmas - to one and all - I toast my glass to you each, and to all Monarchists and men of Good Will, everywhere, most especially to Beaverbrook our kind host!
Beaverbrook is dead. Long live The Monarchist.
As your grateful host, I have decided to revert back to my original pen name, mainly because of the desire to maintain one profile, which makes it easier when commenting on other sites.
God save the Queen!
Long may she reign!
Merry Christmas to all!
A very good speech yesterday, I thought.
God Save the Queen!
God bless and prosper the Armed Forces!
Long live Britain!
Interesting. I quoted these same words (leaving out only the second paragraph) in my Christmas blog post.
I am not one of Her Majesty's subjects, but I've always admired her steadfastness in the face of change. Long may she continue to inspire the world with her devotion to the "ageless ideals" of humanity.
Vivat Regina!
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