Picture courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture courtesy of Jim Kuntz

On a fishing trip in 1945, Franc L. McCluer, president of Westminster College, mulled over possible speakers for the school's annual John Findley Green Foundation Lecture and entertained the thought of inviting Winston Churchill, who had just ended his tenure as British prime minister after a major election upset. McCluer contacted Major General Harry H. Vaughan, a Westminster alumnus and military aide in the Truman administration, who relayed the request to the president. Truman liked the idea and asked McCluer to issue an invitation. He added, a personal note to the former prime minister: "This is a wonderful school in my home state. Hope you can do it. I'll introduce you." Churchill accepted, and the date was set for March 5, 1946.

As early as January, the press invaded Fulton, transforming the college gymnasium's basement into a media center. Western Union constructed thirty-five telegraph lines, and Bell Telephone spent three weeks wiring for radio coverage. Each of the four national radio networks broadcast the speech live.

The Churchill-Truman motorcade arrived on the outskirts of Fulton at 12:43 p.m. and paraded through town before an estimated crowd of twenty-five thousand. The party then stopped at the McCluer home, where they dined on country ham and fried chicken. Following the luncheon, Churchill declared, "The pig has reached its highest point of evolution in this ham."

Churchill's speech "The Sinews of Peace," discussed the growing threat of Soviet communism in post-World War II Europe. In his classic style, the eloquent prime minister declared, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent."

Public reaction to Churchill's speech was generally neutral or negative. Still exultant from the Allied victory over the Axis powers, the press, as it does with conservative statements, expressed doubt at any need for an alliance against the Soviet Union. Within three years, however, NATO had been created, Germany divided, and Berlin blockaded. Churchill's words proved prophetic of the coming cold war era.

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