Politicians give speeches all the time. Most of what they say is quickly forgotten, or perhaps better never said in the first place. But occasionally a politician gives a speech that defines an age. That is precisely what happened on March 5, 1946 when Winston Churchill spoke at tiny Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He gave the world what became the central metaphor of the cold war: the iron curtain.
Churchill was in Missouri at the encouragement of President Harry Truman, who had grown up down the road in Independence and who introduced him when he spoke at Westminster College. “Winnie” was no longer prime minister by the time he came to campus. In July 1945, just two months after he led Britain to victory over Germany, British voters tossed him and his Conservative Party out of power. But his electoral defeat had hardly dimmed his star power in the United States.
Churchill enjoyed the attention that the Americans gave him. He toyed with the press in the run-up to the speech. “I think ‘No Comment’ is a splendid expression,” he told reporters who asked what he would say in Fulton. “I am using it again and again.”
