Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (128 page)

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical. I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May he protect each and every one of us. May he guide me in the days to come.

The wartime leader of Britain, turned out of office by a populace that preferred an experiment with socialism, came to the United States to alert the Western world to the danger of an expansionist Soviet Union. At the suggestion of President Harry Truman, a Missourian, he chose the small Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, as his forum—not a prestigious setting, but he was accompanied on the train from Washington by the president, who played a gentle game of poker on the way.

This is a Beethoven symphony of a speech, delivered March 5, 1946. Too often, anthologists cut it to a third of its length, and historians cite it for the “iron curtain” coinage. About that phrase: Churchill titled his speech “The Sinews of Peace,” using a muscular metaphor to send the message that peace required strength. The phrase “iron curtain” had been used since the eighteenth century as the name for the fireproof curtain in theaters. As a metaphor, it was used by the earl of Munster in 1819, by H. G. Wells in 1904, and frequently by the German general staff. In May of 1945, Churchill cabled Truman about the Russians: “An iron curtain is drawn down their frontier. We do not know what is going on behind.” Ten months later, he used the phrase twice in his Fulton speech, and it provided the label needed to describe the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe.

It begins with the sounds of an orchestra tuning up: an amusing play on the name Westminster, as the speaker gets in tune with his audience. Then the duh-duh-duh-dum of a beginning: “The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment….” The first movement is about the “overall strategic concept” of providing safety from war and tyranny: Churchill proposes a police force for the United Nations around the world, and acknowledges the Soviet domination
of Eastern Europe but calls for the West “to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man.”

The second movement’s point is helped by introducing it as “the crux” of what the speaker has “traveled here to say”: that is, a “special relationship” must be encouraged between the British Commonwealth and the United States, which might lead one day to a common citizenship, but is surely needed now to preserve peace with freedom in the face of the new Soviet threat.

The third movement is a dark delineation of that threat: “A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted [he first said ‘lightened’] by the Allied victory.” But—and then came the iron curtain line. He lists the fallen countries—“somber facts to have to recite on the morrow of a victory”—and hints at his concern about the agreement at Yalta (where Roosevelt trusted Stalin against Churchill’s better judgment).

Finally, in the speech’s fourth movement, he reprises the crux of what he came to say: that the answer to the threat is the special relationship of the English-speaking peoples, in fraternal association on the “high roads of the future.” For whom and for how long? “Not only for us but for all, not only for our time for a century to come.”

In substance, the “Iron Curtain” speech reads well five decades later, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, and after the Americans and British led the world into stopping the threat in the Persian Gulf in the early nineties. Though its use of a catchphrase overshadowed its own substance, and though it was not delivered by a prime minister speaking in defiance of bombers overhead, this is the most Churchillian of Churchill’s speeches.

***

I AM VERY
glad, indeed, to come to Westminister College this afternoon, and I am complimented that you should give me a degree from an institution whose reputation has been so solidly accepted. It is the name Westminister, somehow or other, which seems familiar to me. I feel as if I’d heard of it before. Indeed, now that I come to think of it, it was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education in politics, dialectics, rhetoric, and one or two other things. In fact, we have both been educated at the same, or similar, or at any rate kindred, establishments.

It is also an honor, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps almost unique, for a private visitor to be introduced to an academic audience by the president of the United States. Amid his heavy burdens, duties, and responsibilities—
unsought but not recoiled from—the president has traveled a thousand miles to dignify and magnify our meeting here today and to give me an opportunity of addressing this kindred nation, as well as my own countrymen across the ocean and perhaps some other countries too.

The president has told you that it is his wish, as I am sure it is yours, that I should have full liberty to give my true and faithful counsel in these anxious and baffling times. I shall certainly avail myself of this freedom and feel the more right to do so because any private ambitions I may have cherished in my younger days have been satisfied beyond my wildest dreams.

Let me, however, make it clear that I have no official mission or status of any kind and that I speak only for myself. There is nothing here but what you see. I can, therefore, allow my mind, with the experience of a lifetime, to play over the problems which beset us on the morrow of our absolute victory in arms, and to try to make sure, with what strength I have, that what has been gained with so much sacrifice and suffering shall be preserved for the future glory and safety of mankind.

Ladies and gentlemen, the United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with this primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. As you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done, but also you must feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement. Opportunity is here now, clear and shining, for both our countries. To reject it or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the aftertime.

It is necessary that constancy of mind, persistency of purpose, and the grand simplicity of decision shall rule and guide the conduct of the English-speaking peoples in peace as they did in war. We must—and I believe we shall—prove ourselves equal to this severe requirement.

President McCluer, when American military men approach some serious situation, they are wont to write at the head of their directive the words “Overall Strategic Concept.” There is wisdom in this, as it leads to clarity of thought. What, then, is the overall strategic concept which we should inscribe today? It is nothing less than the safety and welfare, the freedom and progress, of all the homes and families of all the men and women in all the lands. And here I speak particularly of the myriad cottage or apartment homes where the wage earner strives, amid the accidents and difficulties of life, to guard his wife and children from privation and bring the family up in the fear of the Lord or upon ethical conceptions which often play their potent part.

To give security to these countless homes they must be shielded from
the two gaunt marauders—war and tyranny. We all know the frightful disturbance in which the ordinary family is plunged when the curse of war swoops down upon the breadwinner and those for whom he works and contrives.

The awful ruin of Europe, with all its vanished glories, and of large parts of Asia, glares us in the eyes.

When the designs of wicked men or the aggressive urge of mighty states dissolve, over large areas, the frame of civilized society, humble folk are confronted with difficulties with which they cannot cope. For them all is distorted, all is broken or is even ground to pulp.

When I stand here this quiet afternoon, I shudder to visualize what is actually happening to millions now and what is going to happen in this period when famine stalks the earth. None can compute what has been called “the unestimated sum of human pain.” Our supreme task and duty is to guard the homes of the common people from the horrors and miseries of another war. We are all agreed on that.

Our American military colleagues, after having proclaimed their “overall strategic concept” and computed available resources, always proceed to the next stop—namely, the method. Here again there is widespread agreement.

A world organization has already been erected for the prime purpose of preventing war. UNO, the successor of the League of Nations, with the decisive addition of the United States and all that that means, is already at work.

We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action and not merely a frothing of words, that it is a true temple of peace, in which the shields of many nations can someday be hung up, and not merely a cockpit in a tower of Babel.

Before we cast away the solid assurances of national armaments for self-preservation, we must be certain that our temple is built not upon shifting sands or quagmires but upon the rock. Anyone can see, with his eyes open, that our path will be difficult and also long, but if we persevere together as we did in the two world wars—though not, alas, in the interval between them—I cannot doubt that we shall achieve our common purpose in the end.

I have, however, a definite and practical proposal to make for action. Courts and magistrates may be set up, but they cannot function without sheriffs and constables. The United Nations Organization must immediately begin to be equipped with an international armed force. In such a matter we can only go step by step; but we must begin now.

I propose that each of the powers and states should be invited to dedicate
a certain number of air squadrons to the service of the world organization. These squadrons would be trained and prepared in their own countries but would move around in rotation from one country to another. They would wear the uniform of their own countries with different badges. They would not be required to act against their own nation but in other respects they would be directed by the world organization.

This might be started on a modest scale, and it would grow as confidence grew.

I wished to see this done after the First World War, and I devoutly trust that it may be done forthwith.

It would, nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, be wrong and imprudent to entrust the secret knowledge or experience of the atomic bomb, which the United States, Great Britain, and Canada now share, to the world organization while it is still in its infancy. It would be criminal madness to cast it adrift in this still agitated and un-united world.

No one in any country has slept less well in their beds because this knowledge and the method and the raw materials to apply it are at present largely retained in American hands.

I do not believe we should all have slept so soundly had the positions been reversed and some Communist or neo-Fascist state monopolized, for the time being, these dread agents. The fear of them alone might easily have been used to enforce totalitarian systems upon the free democratic world, with consequences appalling to human imagination.

God has willed that this shall not be, and we have at least a breathing space to set our house in order, before this peril has to be encountered, and even then, if no effort is spared, we should still possess so formidable a superiority as to impose effective deterrents upon its employment or threat of employment by others.

Ultimately, when the essential brotherhood of man is truly embodied and expressed in a world organization, with all the necessary practical safeguards to make it effective, these powers would naturally be confided to that organization.

Now I come to the second of the two marauders, to the second danger which threatens the cottage home and ordinary people—namely, tyranny. We cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the United States and throughout the British Empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful.

In these states, control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments, to a degree which is overwhelming and contrary to every principle of democracy. The power of the
state is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police.