War & Peace Quote by Owen Arthur

Arthur’s line is a politician’s attempt to turn effort into inevitability, the oldest trick in democratic rhetoric: if the cause is “great and good,” then defeat becomes not just unlikely but almost illegitimate. The sentence marches in ceremonial cadence, starting with collective propulsion (“Let us go forward”) and immediately reframing politics as war (“this battle”), a move that launders messy policy fights into moral combat. Once you’re in a battle, compromise looks like surrender.

The key word is “fortified.” It borrows from military engineering to suggest the mind can be armored. Conviction isn’t presented as a feeling but as infrastructure: something you build up to withstand doubt, criticism, even evidence. That’s the subtextual bargain offered to listeners: you supply loyalty and endurance; the leader supplies meaning.

Then comes the velvet absolutism of “will never fail.” It isn’t a factual claim so much as a disciplinary one. By attaching success to virtue (“labour” in “service”), Arthur implies that failure would signal insufficient devotion, not flawed strategy. It’s a motivational engine, but also a subtle inoculation against accountability.

Contextually, this reads like post-independence or reform-era Caribbean political speech, where nation-building required sustained public buy-in amid economic constraint. The diction (“labour,” “service”) nods to working-class respectability and collective sacrifice, aligning civic effort with moral worth. The line works because it offers a clean emotional geometry: hardship now, righteousness always, victory eventually. It’s less a forecast than a demand for perseverance dressed as destiny.