When Winston Churchill -- whose mother was an American -- visited the United States in 1946, he gave a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in which he defined the international conflict that had arisen in the wake of World War II.

"The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power," he said. "It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future."

"A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory," said Churchill, who was then serving as leader of the opposition in the British Parliament. "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."

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent," he said. "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 what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow."

"Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts -- and facts they are -- this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up," said Churchill. "Nor is it one which contains the essentials of........

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