American Presidents and Winston Churchill at Westminster College
“This is a wonderful school in my home state,” wrote Harry Truman on 3 October 1945, at the bottom of the letter from Westminster College President Franc McCluer to Winston Churchill. The American president added a personal plea and a promise: “Hope you can do it. I’ll introduce you.”
The postscript served its purpose. Churchill accepted the invitation to deliver the college’s John Findley Green Foundation Lecture, a lectureship established in 1937 with the intent to bring to the Missouri college individuals to “discuss economic, social, or political problems of international concern.” That vision has been met.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, both the President of the United States and Britain’s famous former Prime Minister were aware of “political problems of international concern,” but it was Churchill who answered the call with his celebrated speech formally called “The Sinews of Peace,” but commonly known as the “Iron Curtain” speech because of its most famous line: “From Stettin in Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” President Truman, who had met Churchill only once previously, at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, fulfilled his promise and traveled to America’s heartland to introduce a man he called “one of the great men of
