Eden, who later became British Prime Minister, made this famous statement on January 4, 1941, following a massive victory by British forces against the Italians in the Western Desert during World War II. Somewhere around 130,000 Italian soldiers surrendered to somewhere around 35,000 British soldiers. He was playfully rewriting a famous quote made by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had previously said about the Royal Air Force, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”