H.M. The Queen During WWII

[Jim]

Their Majesties In Bermondsey, during a tour of East End air-raid shelters on August 1st.. Wherever the foul horrors of war have afflicted their people, they have, by their sympathy and by their own devotion to duty, cemented the bond between Crown and commoner.

We, like yourselves, love peace, and have not devoted the years behind us to the planning of death and destruction. It is only now that we are beginning to marshal around us in their full strength the devotion and resources of our great British family of nations, which will in the end, please God, assuredly prevail. .
Through these waiting months a heavy burden is being borne by our people. As I go among them I marvel at their unshakable constancy . . . Yet hardship has only steeled our hearts and strengthened our resolution. Wherever I go I see bright eyes and smiling faces, for though our road is stony and hard it is straight, and we know that we fight in a great cause.
It gives us strength to know that you have not been content to pass us by on the other side; to us, in this time of our tribulation you have surely shown that compassion which has been for 2,000 years the mark of the good neighbour . . . To you tyranny is as hateful as it is to us; to you the things for which we will fight to the death are no less sacred. To my mind, at any rate, your generosity is born of your conviction that we fight to save a cause which is yours no less than ours; of your high resolve that, however great the cost and however long the struggle, justice and freedom, human dignity and kindness, shall not perish from the earth.

From H.M. the Queen's broadcast to the Women of the United States, August 10,1941

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H.M. THE QUEEN, accompanied by the two Princesses, presenting a miniature sword to the most efficient cadet (A. H. Taylor), after the "Passing Out" parade of a company of Sandhurst Cadets at Sandhurst College.

Accompanied by King George, the Queen passes through some of the worst of Hull's bombed areas. She has seen at first-hand what, in her broadcast, she termed "the bitter but also proud sorrow of war."