War & Peace Quote by Eamon de Valera

De Valera’s sentence walks a tightrope between piety and policy, and it does so with the careful cadence of a leader governing in a country where religious language carried real civic force. He opens by crediting survival to God’s pleasure, a phrase that sounds humble but also strategically diffuses blame: if the years of war have spared “us,” that sparing is framed as providence, not mere luck or political calculation. It’s a soothing theology for anxious citizens, especially in an era when Europe’s catastrophe made neutrality feel less like a stance and more like a fragile miracle.

Then comes the pivot that reveals the machinery underneath the prayer. “We pray” keeps the nation in a collective, reverent posture, but the closing clause snaps the audience back into civic obligation: “But we must do our part.” That “but” is the tell. It’s a moral handshake between faith and discipline, implying that divine favor is conditional on human conduct. The subtext is behavioral: accept rationing, accept restrictions, accept vigilance, accept the state’s decisions. Prayer becomes a preface to compliance.

In context, de Valera is speaking as the architect and guardian of Irish neutrality during World War II (“the Emergency”), constantly navigating pressures from Britain, the Allies, and domestic opinion. The line reassures a devout public without surrendering agency. He sanctifies endurance while recruiting it. God may save, but the state will organize the saving.