History is a cruel judge. It sees in black and white, leaving no room for nuance. Today, I bent the knee. Not because I wanted to, not because I lacked the courage to fight, but because the game demands it. Sometimes, survival is not about charging forward with a sword drawn; sometimes, it’s about stepping back, assessing the battlefield, and choosing the moment when the blade will strike deepest.

Neville Chamberlain comes to mind. Poor, maligned Chamberlain. A man remembered not for his foresight, but for the price he paid to buy Britain the most valuable commodity of all: time. They called him weak for signing the Munich Agreement, for standing before his people and declaring “peace for our time” while handing Hitler the Sudetenland. What they didn’t understand—and what many still fail to see—is that peace was never the goal. Time was.

The Britain of 1938 wasn’t ready for war. The RAF was underdeveloped, the army outmatched, and the nation still staggering under the weight of the First World War’s scars. Hitler’s Germany, on the other hand, was a juggernaut: bold, aggressive, and terrifyingly prepared. To face him then would have been suicide, a futile gesture of valor that would have left Britain crushed and its people doomed. Chamberlain knew this. He bent the knee at Munich not to appease Hitler, but to prepare for him. Every handshake, every speech, every concession—it was a gamble, a calculated risk to stall the inevitable and give his nation time to fortify.

And fortify they did. Radar systems were built. Fighter planes were manufactured. Alliances were strengthened. By the time war came knocking in 1939, Britain was far from invincible, but it was no longer defenseless. Chamberlain bought his people a year. One year. A brief flicker in history’s long shadow, but enough to change the course of a war.

Of course, there was a cost. There always is. The cost for Chamberlain was his reputation, his legacy. He became the face of appeasement, the man who bent to a dictator’s will. They burned him in effigy, mocked him in cartoons, erased the nuances of his actions with a single word: coward. But was it cowardice to delay an unwinnable fight? Was it weakness to shield his people from a war they weren’t ready for? No. It was strategy, plain and simple. The kind of strategy only a leader with the courage to endure ridicule can embrace.

I think of Chamberlain as I put pen to paper tonight because I, too, have bent the knee. The critics will come, whispering their disapproval. They’ll say I should have fought today, that conceding was a betrayal of strength. But they don’t see the long game. They don’t see the pieces I’ve moved into place, the time I’ve gained to prepare for a fight worth winning. Victory doesn’t always come to the loudest or the boldest. Sometimes, it belongs to the one who waits.

There is a price for this choice, and I’ll pay it. I’ll wear the mask of the defeated, endure the sneers and the whispers. But in the quiet moments, I’ll know the truth. The war isn’t lost—it hasn’t even begun. And when it does, I’ll be ready.

Bending the knee isn’t surrender. It’s survival. It’s patience. It’s the art of turning today’s loss into tomorrow’s triumph. Chamberlain knew that. I know that.

But even if Chamberlain didn’t fully know—if he doubted, if he feared he might be making the wrong decision—I do. I see his actions clearly, unmarred by the haze of condemnation. Where the world sees a man crumbling under the weight of Hitler’s demands, I see a leader holding the line in the only way he could. I see a man who sacrificed his name so his nation could endure. He bore the scorn of history for a strategy that would never be attributed to him, yet its success was undeniable. He may not have known that his bending of the knee would be remembered as weakness, but I know better. I know it was the quiet courage of a man who valued his people’s survival over his own glory.

So, tonight, I hold him in high honor, even if the world will not. Where others see a cautionary tale, I see an example to be followed. Chamberlain bent the knee so Britain could stand. I have bent the knee in the past & future, knowing that my time to stand will come.

And when it does & as it has in the past, I’ll stand not just for myself, but for the wisdom of those who dared to wait. For Chamberlain, for the misunderstood heroes, for the strategists who endure the jeers of the present to safeguard the future. The war will come. The war always comes. But when it does, I’ll be ready—because I have learned the lesson that time, misunderstood by so many, is the most precious weapon of all.