"Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along. Let it roll!"

Throughout Britain, particularly London and the South East, commemorations have taken place to mark the 70th anniversary of a speech before the House of Commons by Winston Churchill. In that speech, Winston Churchill uttered the famous line: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

The speech, which gave rise to the nickname "The Few" for the RAF personnel who piloted Spitfires, Hurricanes and Lancasters over the skies of Britain to repel the Nazis' aerial assault of Britain, was generally a state of the war report from the Prime Minister. Churchill spends the first third of the speech detailing technological differences between the two world wars, stating that while casualties in the Battle of Britain were one-fifth that of World War I in the first year, the focus had changed from being an exclusively military struggle to total warfare against civilians, aimed at weakening the British resolve.

As Churchill lauded "The Few" he went on to detail the democracies that had fallen under the power of the German blitzkrieg, and assured them that they had a champion in Great Britain and the United States.

The end of the speech, which rarely is discussed in contrast to "The Few", contains a poignant close from Churchill. As he brings up the need for Britain and the United States to come together in common dialogue and defence, he said:

These are important steps. Undoubtedly this process means that these two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage.

For my own part, looking out upon the future, I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished; no one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along. Let it roll. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days.

A year later, with the Battle of Britain won by "The Few" and the Nazi war machine setting its sights east toward Moscow and Stalingrad, Churchill would meet with Franklin D. Roosevelt off the coast of Newfoundland to hammer out the Atlantic Charter. Not only did it provide a foundation on which the United Nations was formed five years later in San Francisco, it also put the final touches onto a special relationship, torn by the Revolution and War of 1812, reunited during World War I, and drawing even closer as two nations divided by common language began to reaffirm their inherent ties.

It was a special relationship that Churchill would grow to appreciate, giving one of his most famous speeches in 1946 on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton. And the United States would pay him back in 1963, as Congress would bestow Churchill with honourary citizenship. (Granted, as Churchill's mother was an American, he could have sought U.S. citizenship outright had he wanted to.)

Indeed today is a day of reflection, not only for the efforts of "The Few" to preserve their country, but their role in helping Churchill defend democracy from a deranged dictatorship and establish the core of the special relationship that continues to ebb and flow through American and British affairs to this day.