**[Text of Margaret Thatcher\'s Eulogy]{.smallcaps}**

A text of Baroness Margaret Thatcher\'s eulogy at the funeral of former
President Ronald Reagan:

 

"We have lost a great president, a great American, and a great man. And
I have lost a dear friend.

 

In his lifetime Ronald Reagan was such a cheerful and invigorating
presence that it was easy to forget what daunting historic tasks he set
himself. He sought to mend America\'s wounded spirit, to restore the
strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism. These
were causes hard to accomplish and heavy with risk.

 

Yet they were pursued with almost a lightness of spirit. For Ronald
Reagan also embodied another great cause - what Arnold Bennett once
called \`the great cause of cheering us all up\'. His politics had a
freshness and optimism that won converts from every class and every
nation - and ultimately from the very heart of the evil empire.

 

Yet his humour often had a purpose beyond humour. In the terrible hours
after the attempt on his life, his easy jokes gave reassurance to an
anxious world. They were evidence that in the aftermath of terror and in
the midst of hysteria, one great heart at least remained sane and
jocular. They were truly grace under pressure.

 

And perhaps they signified grace of a deeper kind. Ronnie himself
certainly believed that he had been given back his life for a purpose.
As he told a priest after his recovery \`Whatever time I\'ve got left
now belongs to the Big Fella Upstairs\'.

 

And surely it is hard to deny that Ronald Reagan\'s life was
providential, when we look at what he achieved in the eight years that
followed.

 

Others prophesied the decline of the West; he inspired America and its
allies with renewed faith in their mission of freedom.

 

Others saw only limits to growth; he transformed a stagnant economy into
an engine of opportunity.

 

Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union;
he won the Cold War - not only without firing a shot, but also by
inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends.

 

I cannot imagine how any diplomat, or any dramatist, could improve on
his words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva summit: \`Let me tell you
why it is we distrust you.\' Those words are candid and tough and they
cannot have been easy to hear. But they are also a clear invitation to a
new beginning and a new relationship that would be rooted in trust.

 

We live today in the world that Ronald Reagan began to reshape with
those words. It is a very different world with different challenges and
new dangers. All in all, however, it is one of greater freedom and
prosperity, one more hopeful than the world he inherited on becoming
president.

 

As Prime Minister, I worked closely with Ronald Reagan for eight of the
most important years of all our lives. We talked regularly both before
and after his presidency. And I have had time and cause to reflect on
what made him a great president.

 

Ronald Reagan knew his own mind. He had firm principles - and, I
believe, right ones. He expounded them clearly, he acted upon them
decisively.

 

When the world threw problems at the White House, he was not baffled, or
disorientated, or overwhelmed. He knew almost instinctively what to do.

 

When his aides were preparing option papers for his decision, they were
able to cut out entire rafts of proposals that they knew \`the Old Man\'
would never wear.

 

When his allies came under Soviet or domestic pressure, they could look
confidently to Washington for firm leadership.

 

And when his enemies tested American resolve, they soon discovered that
his resolve was firm and unyielding.

 

Yet his ideas, though clear, were never simplistic. He saw the many
sides of truth.

 

Yes, he warned that the Soviet Union had an insatiable drive for
military power and territorial expansion; but he also sensed it was
being eaten away by systemic failures impossible to reform.

 

Yes, he did not shrink from denouncing Moscow\'s \`evil empire\'. But he
realised that a man of goodwill might nonetheless emerge from within its
dark corridors.

 

So the President resisted Soviet expansion and pressed down on Soviet
weakness at every point until the day came when communism began to
collapse beneath the combined weight of these pressures and its own
failures. And when a man of goodwill did emerge from the ruins,
President Reagan stepped forward to shake his hand and to offer sincere
cooperation.

 

Nothing was more typical of Ronald Reagan than that large-hearted
magnanimity - and nothing was more American.

 

Therein lies perhaps the final explanation of his achievements. Ronald
Reagan carried the American people with him in his great endeavours
because there was perfect sympathy between them. He and they loved
America and what it stands for - freedom and opportunity for ordinary
people.

 

As an actor in Hollywood\'s golden age, he helped to make the American
dream live for millions all over the globe. His own life was a
fulfilment of that dream. He never succumbed to the embarrassment some
people feel about an honest expression of love of country.

 

He was able to say \`God Bless America\' with equal fervour in public
and in private. And so he was able to call confidently upon his
fellow-countrymen to make sacrifices for America - and to make
sacrifices for those who looked to America for hope and rescue.

 

With the lever of American patriotism, he lifted up the world. And so
today the world - in Prague, in Budapest, in Warsaw, in Sofia, in
Bucharest, in Kiev and in Moscow itself - the world mourns the passing
of the Great Liberator and echoes his prayer \"God Bless America\".

 

Ronald Reagan\'s life was rich not only in public achievement, but also
in private happiness. Indeed, his public achievements were rooted in his
private happiness. The great turning point of his life was his meeting
and marriage with Nancy.

 

On that we have the plain testimony of a loving and grateful husband:
\`Nancy came along and saved my soul\'. We share her grief today. But we
also share her pride - and the grief and pride of Ronnie\'s children.

 

For the final years of his life, Ronnie\'s mind was clouded by illness.
That cloud has now lifted. He is himself again - more himself than at
any time on this earth. For we may be sure that the Big Fella Upstairs
never forgets those who remember Him. And as the last journey of this
faithful pilgrim took him beyond the sunset, and as heaven\'s morning
broke, I like to think - in the words of Bunyan - that \`all the
trumpets sounded on the other side\'.

 

We here still move in twilight. But we have one beacon to guide us that
Ronald Reagan never had. We have his example. Let us give thanks today
for a life that achieved so much for all of God\'s children."