What The Speaker called the Battle of The Moon is over. I expect that the Battle of Earth is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Human civilization. Upon it depends our own Human life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our City. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Oryx knows that he will have to break us in this Planet or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all the Solar system may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the Nine, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the City and its Colonies last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'