Conference back40::soapbox

674.0. "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic" by COVERT::COVERT (John R. Covert) Fri Mar 08 1996 20:59

Winston Churchill: The Iron Curtain

  As early as May 1945, when the war with Germany was hardly over, Prime 
  Minister Churchill had foreseen that most of eastern Europe would be drawn 
  into the Soviet sphere of influence.  Russian policies, in Churchill's 
  view, offered little chance for a successful establishment of peace in the 
  years ahead.  By 1946 the Cold War between Russia and the West had become a 
  reality, although most Americans were not eager to reckon with such a 
  problem so soon after the war.  At President Truman's request, Churchill 
  came to the United States in 1946 and on March 5 at Westminster College in 
  Fulton, Missouri, delivered an address on East-West relations and the 
  prospects for maintaining peace.  A portion of the address is reprinted 
  below.

NEITHER THE SURE PREVENTION of war nor the continuous rise of world 
organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal 
association of the English-speaking peoples.  This means a special 
relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United 
States.

This is no time for generalities.  I will venture to be precise.  Fraternal 
association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual 
understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society but the 
continuance of the intimate relationships between our military advisers, 
leading to common study of potential dangers, similarity of weapons and 
manuals of instruction, and interchange of officers and cadets at colleges.  
It should carry with it the continuance of the present facilities for 
mutual security by the joint use of all naval and air-force bases in the 
possession of either country all over the world.  This would perhaps double 
the mobility of the American Navy and Air Force.  It would greatly expand 
that of the British Empire forces, and it might well lead, if and as the 
world calms down, to important financial savings.  Already we use together 
a large number of islands; many more will be entrusted to our joint care in 
the near future.

The United States already has a permanent defense agreement with the 
Dominion of Canada, which is so devotedly attached to the British 
Commonwealth and Empire.  This agreement is more effective than many of 
those which have often been made under formal alliances.  This principle 
should be extended to all the British commonwealths with full reciprocity.  
Thus, whatever happens, and thus only we shall be secure ourselves and able 
to work together for the high and simple causes that are dear to us and 
bode no ill to any.  Eventually there may come the principle of common 
citizenship, but that we may be content to leave to destiny, whose 
outstretched arm so many of us can clearly see.

There is, however, an important question we must ask ourselves.  Would a 
special relationship between the United States and the British Commonwealth 
be inconsistent with our overriding loyalties to the world organization?  I 
reply that, on the contrary, it is probably the only means by which that 
organization will achieve its full stature and strength.  There are already 
the special United States relations with Canada and between the United 
States and the South American republics.  We also have our twenty-year 
treaty of collaboration and mutual assistance with Soviet Russia.  I agree 
with Mr. Bevin that it might well be a fifty-year treaty.  We have an 
alliance with Portugal unbroken since 1384.  None of these clash with the 
general interest of a world agreement.  On the contrary, they help it.  "In 
my father's house are many mansions." Special associations between members 
of the United Nations which have no aggressive point against any other 
country, which harbor no design incompatible with the Charter of the United 
Nations, far from being harmful, are beneficial and, as I believe, 
indispensable.

I spoke earlier of the temple of peace.  Workmen from all countries must 
build that temple.  If two of the workmen know each other particularly well 
and are old friends, if their families are intermingled and if they have 
faith in each other's purpose hope in each other's future and charity 
toward each other's shortcomings, to quote some good words I read here the 
other day why cannot they work together at the common task as friends and 
partners?  Why cannot they share their tools and thus increase each other's 
working powers?  Indeed, they must do so or else the temple may not be 
built, or, being built, it may collapse, and we shall all be proved 
unteachable and have to go and try to learn again for a third time, in a 
school of war, incomparably more rigorous than that from which we have just 
been released.  The Dark Ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the 
gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material 
blessings upon mankind may even bring about its total destruction.

Beware, I say; time may be short.  Do not let us take the course of letting 
events drift along till it is too late.  If there is to be a fraternal 
association of the kind I have described, with all the extra strength and 
security which both our countries can derive from it, let us make sure that 
that great fact is known to the world, and that it plays its part in 
steadying and stabilizing the foundations of peace.  Prevention is better 
than cure.

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied 
victory.  Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international 
organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, 
if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies.  I have a strong 
admiration and regard for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime 
comrade Marshal Stalin.  There is sympathy and goodwill in Britain -- and 
I doubt not here also -- toward the peoples of all the Russias and a 
resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing 
lasting friendships.

We understand the Russians need to be secure on her western frontiers from 
all renewal of German aggression.  We welcome her to her rightful place 
among the leading nations of the world.  Above all we welcome constant, 
frequent, and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own 
people on both sides of the Atlantic.  It is my duty, however, to place 
before you certain facts about the present position in Europe -- I am sure 
I do not wish to, but it is my duty, I feel, to present them to you.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has 
descended across the Continent.  Behind that line lie all the capitals of 
the ancient states of central and eastern Europe.  Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, 
Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all these famous cities 
and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are 
subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very 
high and increasing measure of control from Moscow.  Athens alone, with its 
immortal glories, is free to decide its future at an election under 
British, American, and French observation.  The Russian-dominated Polish 
government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon 
Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and 
undreamed of are now taking place.

The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern states of 
Europe, have been raised to preeminence and power far beyond their numbers 
and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control.  Police 
governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in 
Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.  Turkey and Persia are both 
profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are made upon them and 
at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow government.  An attempt is 
being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi-Communist Party in 
their zone of occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of 
left-wing German leaders.

At the end of the fighting last June, the American and British armies 
withdrew westward in accordance with an earlier agreement to a depth, at 
some points, 150 miles on a front of nearly 400 miles to allow the Russians 
to occupy this vast expanse of territory which the Western democracies had 
conquered.  If now the Soviet government tries, by separate action, to 
build up a pro-Communist Germany in their areas, this will cause new 
serious difficulties in the British and American zones and will give the 
defeated Germans the power of putting themselves up to auction between the 
Soviets and Western democracies.  Whatever conclusions may be drawn from 
these facts -- and facts they are -- this is certainly not the liberated 
Europe we fought to build up.  Nor is it one which contains the essentials 
of permanent peace.

The safety of the world, ladies and gentlemen, requires a new unity in 
Europe from which no nation should be permanently outcast.

It is impossible not to comprehend -- twice we have seen them drawn by 
irresistible forces in time to secure the victory but only after frightful 
slaughter and devastation have occurred.  Twice the United States has had 
to send millions of its young men to fight a war, but now war can find any 
nation between dusk and dawn.  Surely we should work within the structure 
of the United Nations and in accordance with our Charter.  That is an open 
course of policy.

In front of the iron curtain which lies across Europe are other causes for 
anxiety.  In Italy the Communist Party is seriously hampered by having to 
support the Communist-trained Marshal Tito's claims to former Italian 
territory at the head of the Adriatic.  Nevertheless, the future of Italy 
hangs in the balance.  Again one cannot imagine a regenerated Europe 
without a strong France.  All my public life I have worked for a strong 
France and I never lost faith in her destiny, even in the darkest hours.  I 
will not lose faith now.

However, in a great number of countries, far from the Russian frontiers and 
throughout the world, Communist fifth columns are established and work in 
complete unity and absolute obedience to the directions they receive from 
the Communist center.  Except in the British Commonwealth and in this 
United States, where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or 
fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian 
civilization.  These are somber facts for anyone to have to recite on the 
morrow of a victory gained by so much splendid comradeship-in-arms and in 
the cause of freedom and democracy, and we should be most unwise not to 
face them squarely while time remains.

The outlook is also anxious in the Far East, and especially in Manchuria.  
The agreement which was made at Yalta, to which I was a party, was 
extremely favorable to Soviet Russia, but it was made at a time when no one 
could say that the German war might not extend all through the summer and 
autumn of 1945 and when the Japanese war was expected to last for a further 
eighteen months from the end of the German war.  In this country you are 
all so well informed about the Far East, and such devoted friends of China, 
that I do not need to expatiate on the situation there.

I have felt bound to portray the shadow which, alike in the West and in the 
East, falls upon the world.  I was a minister at the time of the Versailles 
Treaty and a close friend of Mr. Lloyd George.  I did not myself agree 
with many things that were done, but I have a very vague impression in my 
mind of that situation, and I find it painful to contrast it with that 
which prevails now.  In those days there were high hopes and unbounded 
confidence that the wars were over and that the League of Nations would 
become all-powerful.  I do not see or feel the same confidence or even the 
same hopes in the haggard world at this time.

On the other hand I repulse the idea that a new war is inevitable; still 
more that it is imminent.  It is because I am so sure that our fortunes are 
in our own hands and that we hold the power to save the future that I feel 
the duty to speak out now that I have an occasion to do so.  I do not 
believe that Soviet Russia desires war.  What they desire is the fruits of 
war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.  But what we 
have to consider here today, while time remains, is the permanent 
prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and 
democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries.

0ur difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to 
them.  They will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens; nor 
will they be relieved by a policy of appeasement.  What is needed is a 
settlement, and the longer this is delayed the more difficult it will be 
and the greater our dangers will become.  From what I have seen of our 
Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is 
nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which 
they have less respect than for military weakness.  For that reason the old 
doctrine of a balance of power is unsound.  We cannot afford, if we can 
help it, to work on narrow margins, of fering temptations to a trial of 
strength.

If the Western democracies stand together in strict adherence to the 
principles of the United Nations Charter, their influence for furthering 
these principles will be immense and no one is likely to molest them.  If, 
however, they become divided or falter in their duty, and if these 
all-important years are allowed to slip away, then indeed Catastrophe may 
overwhelm us all.

Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my fellow countrymen and 
to the world, but no one paid any attention.  Up till the year 1933, or 
even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has 
overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let 
loose upon mankind.  There never was a war in all history easier to prevent 
by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of 
the globe.  It could have been prevented without the firing of a single 
shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous, and honored today, but no 
one would listen, and one by one we were all sucked into the awful 
whirlpool.

We surely must not let that happen again.  This can only be achieved by 
reaching now, in 1946, a good understanding on all points with Russia under 
the general authority of the United Nations Organization and by the 
maintenance of that good understanding through many peaceful years, by the 
world instrument, supported by the whole strength of the English-speaking 
world and all its connections.

Let no man underrate the abiding power of the British Empire and 
Commonwealth.  Because you see the 46 million in our island harassed about 
their food supply, of which they grew only one-half, even in wartime, or 
because we have difficulty in restarting our industries and export trade 
after six years of passionate war effort, do not suppose that we shall not 
come through these dark years of privation as we have come through the 
glorious years of agony, or that half a century from now you will not see 
70 or 80 million Britons spread about the world and united in defense of 
our traditions, our way of life, and of the world causes we and you 
espouse.

If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealth be added to that of 
the United States, with all that such cooperation implies in the air, on 
the sea, and in science and industry, there will be no quivering, 
precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or 
adventure.  On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of 
security.  If we adhere faithfully to the Charter of the United Nations and 
walk forward in sedate and sober strength, seeking no one's land or 
treasure, or seeking to lay no arbitrary control on the thoughts of men, if 
all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your 
own in fraternal association, the highroads of the future will be clear, 
not only for us but for all, not only for our time but for a century to 
come.

    
    Sound bites would be nice. 

There will be plenty of them on the telly; Maggie's in Missourah today
celebrating the 50th anniversary of that thar speech.

/johnk

    
    /john,
    
    not a word I heard on the Mag-speech.