Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
2053
AUTHOR:
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874–1965)
QUOTATION:
There is a hush over all Europe, nay, over all the world…. Alas! it is the hush of suspense, and in many lands it is the hush of fear. Listen! No, listen carefully, I think I hear something—yes, there it was quite clear. Don’t you hear it? It is the tramp of armies crunching the gravel of the paradegrounds, splashing through rain-soaked fields, the tramp of two million German soldiers and more than a million Italians—“going on maneuvers”—yes, only on maneuvers!
ATTRIBUTION:
WINSTON CHURCHILL, “A Hush over Europe,” broadcast to the United States from London, August 8, 1939.—Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963, ed. Robert Rhodes James, vol. 6, p. 6150 (1974).
