    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [November 29, 1995]
    [Pages 1795-1799]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in London
    November 29, 1995

        My Lord Chancellor, Madam Speaker, Lord Privy Seal, the Lord
    President of the Council, Mr. Prime Minister, my Lords, and Members of
    the House of Commons. To the Lord Chancellor, the longer I hear you talk
    the more I wish we had an institution like this in American Government.
    I look out and see so many of your distinguished leaders in the House of
    Lords, and I think it might not be a bad place to be after a long and
    troublesome political career. [Laughter] My wife and I are honored to be
    here today, and I thank you for inviting me to address you.
        I have been here to Westminster many times before. As a student, I
    visited often, and over the last 20 years I have often returned. Always
    I have felt the power of this place, where the voices of free people who
    love liberty, believe in reason, and struggle for truth have for
    centuries kept your great nation a beacon of hope for all the world and
    a very special model for your former colonies which became the United
    States of America.

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        Here, where the voices of Pitt and Burke, Disraeli and Gladstone
    rang out; here, where the rights of English men and women were secured
    and enlarged; here, where the British people's determination to stand
    against the tyrannies of this century were shouted to the entire world:
    Here is a monument to liberty to which every free person owes honor and
    gratitude.
        As one whose ancestors came from these isles, I cherish this
    opportunity. Since I entered public life I have often thought of the
    words of Prime Minister Churchill when he spoke to our Congress in 1941.
    He said that if his father had been American and his mother British,
    instead of the other way around, he might have gotten there on his own.
    [Laughter] Well, for a long time I thought that if my forebears had not
    left this country, perhaps I might have gotten here on my own, at least
    to the House of Commons.
        But I have to tell you, now our American television carries your
    ``question time.'' And I have seen Prime Minister Major and Mr. Blair
    and the other members slicing each other up face-to-face--[laughter]--
    with such great wit and skill, against the din of cheers and jeers. I am
    now convinced my forebears did me a great favor by coming to America.
    [Laughter]
        Today the United States and the United Kingdom glory in an
    extraordinary relationship that unites us in a way never before seen in
    the ties between two such great nations. It is perhaps all the more
    remarkable because of our history, first, the war we waged for our
    independence, and then barely three decades later, another war we waged
    in which your able forces laid siege to our Capitol. Indeed, the White
    House still bears the burn marks of that earlier stage in our
    relationship. And now, whenever we have even the most minor
    disagreement, I walk out on the Truman Balcony and I look at those burn
    marks, just to remind myself that I dare not let this relationship get
    out of hand again. [Laughter]
        In this century we overcame the legacy of our differences. We
    discovered our common heritage again, and even more important, we
    rediscovered our shared values. This November, we are reminded of how
    exactly the bonds that now join us grew, of the three great trials our
    nations have faced together in this century.
        A few weeks ago we marked the anniversary of that day in 1918 when
    the guns fell silent in World War I, a war we fought side by side to
    defend democracy against militarism and reaction. On this Veterans Day
    for us and Remembrance Day for you, we both paid special tribute to the
    British and American generation that, 50 years ago now, in the skies
    over the Channel, on the craggy hills of Italy, in the jungles of Burma,
    in the flights over the Hump, did not fail or falter. In the greatest
    struggle for freedom in all of history, they saved the world.
        Our nations emerged from that war with the resolve to prevent
    another like it. We bound ourselves together with other democracies in
    the West and with Japan, and we stood firm throughout the long twilight
    struggle of the cold war, from the Berlin Airlift of 1948 to the fall of
    the Berlin Wall on another November day just 6 years ago.
        In the years since, we have also stood together, fighting together
    for victory in the Persian Gulf, standing together against terrorism,
    working together to remove the nuclear cloud from our children's bright
    future, and together preparing the way for peace in Bosnia, where your
    peacekeepers have performed heroically and saved the lives of so many
    innocent people. I thank the British nation for its strength and its
    sacrifice through all these struggles. And I am proud to stand here on
    behalf of the American people to salute you.
        Ladies and gentlemen, in this century, democracy has not merely
    endured, it has prevailed. Now it falls to us to advance the cause that
    so many fought and sacrificed and died for. In this new era, we must
    rise not in a call to arms but in a call to peace.
        The great American philosopher John Dewey once said, ``The only way
    to abolish war is to make peace heroic.'' Well, we know we will never
    abolish war or all the forces that cause it because we cannot abolish
    human nature or the certainty of human error. But we can make peace
    heroic. And in so doing, we can create a future even more true to our
    ideals than all our glorious past. To do so, we must maintain the
    resolve in peace we shared in war when everything was at stake.
        In this new world our lives are not so very much at risk, but much
    of what makes life worth living is still very much at stake. We have
    fought our wars. Now let us wage our peace.
        This time is full of possibility. The chasm of ideology has
    disappeared. Around the world, the ideals we defended and advanced are
    now

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    shared by more people than ever before. In Europe and many other
    nations, long-suffering peoples at last control their our destinies. And
    as the cold war gives way to the global village, economic freedom is
    spreading alongside political freedom, bringing with it renewed hope for
    a better life, rooted in the honorable and healthy competition of effort
    and ideas.
        America is determined to maintain our alliance for freedom and peace
    with you and determined to seek the partnership of all like-minded
    nations to confront the threats still before us. We know the way.
    Together we have seen how we succeed when we work together.
        When President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill first met on
    the deck of the HMS Prince of Wales in 1941 at one of the loneliest
    moments in your nation's history, they joined in prayer, and the Prime
    Minister was filled with hope. Afterwards, he said, ``The same language,
    the same hymns, more or less the same ideals. Something big may be
    happening, something very big.''
        Well, once again, he was right. Something really big happened. On
    the basis of those ideals, Churchill and Roosevelt and all of their
    successors built an enduring alliance and a genuine friendship between
    our nations. Other times in other places are littered with the vows of
    friendship sworn during battle and then abandoned in peacetime. This one
    stands alone, unbroken, above all the rest, a model for the ties that
    should bind all democracies.
        To honor that alliance and the Prime Minister who worked so mightily
    to create it, I am pleased to announce here, in the home of British
    freedom, that the United States will name one of the newest and most
    powerful of its surface ships, a guided missile destroyer, the United
    States Ship  Winston Churchill. When that ship slips down the ways in
    the final year of this century, its name will ride the seas as a
    reminder for the coming century of an indomitable man who shaped our
    age, who stood always for freedom, who showed anew the glorious strength
    of the human spirit. I thank the members of the Churchill family who are
    here today with us, Lady Soames, Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill, and
    I thank the British people for their friendship and their strength over
    these many years.
        After so much success together we know that our relationship with
    the United Kingdom must be at the heart of our striving in this new era.
    Because of the history we have lived, because of the power and
    prosperity we enjoy, because of the accepted truth that you and we have
    no dark motives in our dealings with other nations, we still bear a
    burden of special responsibility.
        In these few years since the cold war we have met that burden by
    making gains for peace and security that ordinary people feel every day.
    We have stepped back from the nuclear precipice with the indefinite
    extension of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and we hope next year
    a comprehensive test ban treaty.
        For the first time in a generation, parents in Los Angeles and
    Manchester and, yes, in Moscow, can now turn out the lights at night
    knowing there are no nuclear weapons pointed at their children. Our
    nations are working together to lay the foundation for lasting
    prosperity. We are bringing down economic barriers between nations with
    the historic GATT agreement and other actions that are creating millions
    of good jobs for our own people and for people throughout the world. The
    United States and the United Kingdom are supporting men and women who
    embrace freedom and democracy the world over with good results, from
    South Africa to Central Europe, from Haiti to the Middle East.
        In the United States, we feel a special gratitude for your efforts
    in Northern Ireland. With every passing month, more people walk the
    streets and live their lives safely, people who otherwise would have
    been added to the toll of the Troubles.
        Tomorrow I will have the privilege of being the first American
    President to visit Northern Ireland, a Northern Ireland where the guns
    are quiet and the children play without fear. I applaud the efforts of
    Prime Minister Major and Irish Prime Minister Bruton who announced
    yesterday their new twin-track initiative to advance the peace process,
    an initiative that provides an opportunity to begin a dialog in which
    all views are represented and all views can be heard. This is a bold
    step forward for peace. I applaud the Prime Minister for taking this
    risk for peace. It is always a hard choice, the choice for peace, for
    success is far from guaranteed. And even if you fail, there will be
    those who resent you for trying. But it is the right thing to do. And in
    the end, the right will win.
        Despite all of the progress we have made in all these areas and
    despite the problems

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    clearly still out there, there are those who say at this moment of hope
    we can afford to relax now behind our secure borders. Now is the time,
    they say, to let others worry about the world's troubles. These are the
    siren songs of myth. They once lured the United States into isolationism
    after World War I. They counseled appeasement to Britain on the very
    brink of World War II. We have gone down that road before. We must never
    go down that road again. We will never go down that road again.
        Though the cold war is over, the forces of destruction challenge us
    still. Today they are armed with a full array of threats, not just the
    single weapon of frontal war. We see them at work in the spread of
    weapons of mass destruction, from nuclear smuggling in Europe to a vial
    of sarin gas being broken open in the Tokyo subway to the bombing of the
    World Trade Center in New York. We see it in the growth of ethnic
    hatred, extreme nationalism, and religious fanaticism, which most
    recently took the life of one of the greatest champions of peace in the
    entire world, the Prime Minister of Israel. We see it in the terrorism
    that just in recent months has murdered innocent people from Islamabad
    to Paris, from Riyadh to Oklahoma City. And we see it in the
    international organized crime and drug trade that poisons our children
    and our communities.
        In their variety these forces of disintegration are waging guerrilla
    wars against humanity. Like communism and fascism, they spread darkness
    over light, barbarism over civilization. And like communism and fascism,
    they will be defeated only because free nations join against them in
    common cause.
        We will prevail again if, and only if, our people support the
    mission. We are, after all, democracies. And they are the ultimate
    bosses of our fate. I believe the people will support this. I believe
    free people, given the information, will make the decisions that will
    make it possible for their leaders to stand against the new threat to
    security and freedom, to peace and prosperity.
        I believe they will see that this hopeful moment cannot be lost
    without grave consequences to the future. We must go out to meet the
    challenges before they come to threaten us. Today, for the United States
    and for Great Britain, that means we must make the difference between
    peace and war in Bosnia.
        For nearly 4 years, a terrible war has torn Bosnia apart, bringing
    horrors we prayed had vanished from the face of Europe forever: the mass
    killings, the endless columns of refugees, the campaigns of deliberate
    rape, the skeletal persons imprisoned in concentration camps. These
    crimes did violence to the conscience of Britons and Americans. Now we
    have a chance to make sure they don't return. And we must seize it.
        We must help peace to take hold in Bosnia because so long as that
    fire rages at the heart of the European Continent, so long as the
    emerging democracies and our allies are threatened by fighting in
    Bosnia, there will be no stable, undivided, free Europe; there will be
    no realization of our greatest hopes for Europe; but most important of
    all, innocent people will continue to suffer and die.
        America fought two World Wars and stood with you in the cold war
    because of our vital stake in a Europe that is stable, strong, and free.
    With the end of the cold war, all of Europe has a chance to be stable,
    strong, and free for the very first time since nation-states appeared on
    the European Continent.
        Now the warring parties in Bosnia have committed themselves to
    peace, and they have asked us to help them make it hold, not by fighting
    a war but by implementing their own peace agreement. Our nations have a
    responsibility to answer the request of those people to secure their
    peace. Without our leadership and without the presence of NATO, there
    will be no peace in Bosnia.
        I thank the United Kingdom that has already sacrificed so much for
    its swift agreement to play a central role in the peace implementation.
    With this act, Britain holds true to its history and to its values. And
    I pledge to you that America will live up to its history and its ideals
    as well.
        We know that if we do not participate in Bosnia our leadership will
    be questioned and our partnerships will be weakened, partnerships we
    must have if we are to help each other in the fight against the common
    threats we face. We can help the people of Bosnia as they seek a way
    back from savagery to civility. And we can build a peaceful, undivided
    Europe.
        Today I reaffirm to you that the United States, as it did during the
    defense of democracy during the cold war, will help lead in building
    this Europe by working for a broader and more

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    lasting peace and by supporting a Europe bound together in a woven
    fabric of vital democracies, market economies, and security cooperation.
        Our cooperation with you through NATO, the sword and shield of
    democracy, can help the nations that once lay behind the Iron Curtain to
    become a part of the new Europe. In the cold war the alliance kept our
    Nation secure and bound the Western democracies together in common
    cause. It brought former adversaries together and gave them the
    confidence to look past ancient enmities. Now NATO will grow and expand
    the circle of common purpose, first through its Partnership For Peace,
    which is already having a remarkable impact on the member countries, and
    then, as we agree, with the admissions of new democratic members. It
    will threaten no one. But it will give its new allies the confidence
    they need to consolidate their freedoms, build their economies,
    strengthen peace, and become your partners for tomorrow.
        Members of the House of Commons and Noble Lords, long before there
    was a United States, one of your most powerful champions of liberty and
    one of the greatest poets of our shared language wrote ``Peace hath her
    victories, no less renowned than war.'' In our time, at last, we can
    prove the truth of John Milton's words.
        As this month of remembrance passes and the holidays approach, I
    leave you with the words Winston Churchill spoke to America during
    America's darkest holiday season of the century. As he lit the White
    House Christmas Tree in 1941, he said, ``Let the children have their
    night of fun and laughter. Let us share to the full in their unstinted
    pleasure before we turn again to the stern tasks in the year that lies
    before us. But now, by our sacrifice and bearing, these same children
    shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live
    in a free and decent world.''
        My friends, we have stood together in the darkest moments of our
    century. Let us now resolve to stand together for the bright and shining
    prospect of the next century. It can be the age of possibility and the
    age of peace. Our forebears won the war. Let us now win the peace.
        May God bless the United Kingdom, the United States, and our solemn
    alliance.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:38 p.m. in the Royal Gallery of
    Westminster Palace. In his remarks, he referred to Lord MacKay of
    Clashfern, Lord Chancellor; Speaker of the House of Commons Betty
    Boothroyd; Viscount Cranborne, Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House
    of Lords; and Anthony Newton, Lord President of the Council and Leader
    of the House of Commons.