In 1946, the Great Britain Prime Minister Winston Churchill was invited to give the prestigious Green Lecture at Westminster College in Fulton.

March 5 marks the 80th anniversary of Churchill’s speech and a letter from Churchill addressed to John C. Hagan II, of Mexico, is on display at the Audrain Historical Museum.

The lecture was sponsored by the A.P. Green family of Mexico. Harry S. Truman, U.S. President and Missourian, personally extended the invitation to Churchill. The wartime Prime Minister graciously accepted. The speech introduced “Iron Curtain” into the free world’s vocabulary.

Dubbed “Sinews of Peace,” the talk was delivered in Fulton on March 5, 1946, and called for an Anglo-American alliance as a buffer to Soviet expansionist ambitions. Churchill stated that the “quivering precarious balance of power” in the world was an invitation to “ambition and adventure” by the Russians who wanted an “indefinite expansion of their powers and doctrines.”

With these prophetic words, Churchill introduced a phrase that became a metaphor for the cold war. “A shadow has fallen upon the scene so lately lighted by the Allied victory from the Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic and Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.”

Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain Green Lecture, delivered in Fulton, sponsored by the Mexico Green Family, is considered one of the most important speeches in history. It marked the beginning of the Cold War and highlighted the ideological divide between the west and the soviet union. These differences persist to the present day. The iron curtain came down Nov. 9, 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

During Churchill’s visit, Hagan II, who managed the “Green’s Field” airport in Mexico, was a guest of the Green Family. The Greens introduced Hagan II to Winston Churchill. This “thank you” note was penned by Churchill in 1950 after receiving a christmas card greeting from Hagan.