A “Great Speech“ On Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech

5 Pages 1316 Words

Great Speech:
Winston Churchil “The Sinews of Peace” (the “Iron Curtain” speech.)

“An iron curtain has descended across Europe, all of her famous cities and populations around the line in what I might call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.”
When Winston Churchil delivered a speech to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri on March 5th, 1946, he was not thinking about destroying the Soviets, or trying to threaten them. Churchil named this speech “The Sinews of Peace” in order to call for peace. He spoke to contain communism, and to form a strong union between American and Great Britain, that would last for “centuries to come.”
“The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. With the power of democracy, comes responsibility for the future. It is important that we inscribe 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. To give security to these homes, they must be shielded from the two gaunt marauders--war and tyranny.
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. We must be certain that our temple of peace 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 I cannot doubt that we shall achieve our common purpose in the end.”
In this last excerpt, Churchil puts responsibility on the shoulders of America and the allied forces. He establishes characteristics of peace: safety, welfare, freedom, and progress, as the necessities to achieve, and maintain peace. This foundation alludes to a later portion of the speech, when Chu...