UNANIMOUS Passage of Hawley's Legislation Making Missouri’s Churchill Museum A National Landmark

[00:00:00] Mr. President, Senator from Missouri. [00:00:02] Mr. President, in the fall of 1945, [00:00:07] former Prime Minister Winston Spencer [00:00:09] Churchill received an otherwise [00:00:13] un indescript, nondescript letter from a [00:00:17] college in the middle of Missouri that I [00:00:20] suspect he had not heard of. It was from [00:00:22] Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. [00:00:24] A letter signed by the president L [00:00:27] Mccclure. and it invited the former [00:00:28] prime minister of the United Kingdom to [00:00:32] come and deliver a lecture in the winter [00:00:34] of 1945 or 1946 or in the spring of [00:00:38] 1946. The letter says, "We should be [00:00:41] glad to arrange the date or dates to [00:00:44] suit your convenience." The president of [00:00:46] Westminster College told this most [00:00:48] famous of former prime ministers, "I [00:00:50] wonder, Mr. president. What might have [00:00:52] happened had there not been a postcript [00:00:55] attached to the same letter handwritten [00:00:57] at the bottom and the left corner as it [00:01:00] came to Mr. Churchill in a different [00:01:03] hand from that signed by the president. [00:01:04] The postcript reads, "This is a [00:01:06] wonderful school in my home state. Hope [00:01:09] you can do it. I will introduce you." [00:01:13] And that is signed Harry S. Truman. [00:01:16] Well, as it turns out, Winston Churchill [00:01:18] accepted this invitation from FL [00:01:20] Mccclure and from President Harry S. [00:01:22] Truman. And in March of 1946, [00:01:26] Prime Minister Churchill boarded [00:01:27] President Truman's presidential train [00:01:30] and traveled with him overland to [00:01:32] Fulton, Missouri. A visit that took him [00:01:34] to Westminster College and a visit that [00:01:36] took Westminster College into the [00:01:38] history books because it was there in [00:01:40] March of 1946 that Winston Churchill [00:01:44] delivered his famous speech. in when he [00:01:46] in which he said from Stettton in the [00:01:47] Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an [00:01:50] iron curtain has descended across the [00:01:53] continent. [00:01:55] Churchill called the speech the sinnus [00:01:57] of peace speech but as everyone [00:02:00] listening to these words knows it has [00:02:02] become immortalized forever as the iron [00:02:05] curtain speech. It was a perilous moment [00:02:07] in Europe, the onset of the Cold War, at [00:02:11] a time when Europe and much of the West [00:02:12] was exhausted and really wished that [00:02:14] perhaps there was a way to just make [00:02:16] peace with the Soviet Union, to look the [00:02:18] other way, to say it's time to recover [00:02:21] after years of warfare. We couldn't risk [00:02:24] another confrontation. The stakes are [00:02:26] too high, the people too exhausted. and [00:02:28] Churchill reminded the West of the [00:02:31] civilizational principles on which we [00:02:34] are founded and which the United States [00:02:36] and the United Kingdom share together. [00:02:38] The principles of conscience and what he [00:02:40] called Christian civilization. The [00:02:43] principles of faith and liberty that [00:02:45] undergurtded our alliance in the Second [00:02:47] World War that have been the principles [00:02:49] on which this nation was founded from [00:02:51] the beginning and that continue to [00:02:52] animate us today. And Churchill spoke [00:02:55] with great boldness and moral clarity [00:02:57] for those principles on that day in [00:02:58] March of 1946 [00:03:01] and a speech that deserves the fame that [00:03:03] has been attached to it ever since. Now, [00:03:05] the interesting thing, Mr. President, is [00:03:07] that when he came there to Fulton, such [00:03:09] a crowd gathered to hear Prime Minister [00:03:12] Churchill that they couldn't find enough [00:03:14] space in the town of Fulton. It's not a [00:03:16] very big town. In fact, the only space [00:03:19] they had in the town or on the campus [00:03:21] big enough was a gymnasium, the [00:03:23] Westminster College Gymnasium, which is [00:03:26] where Churchill delivered his famous [00:03:27] address with President Harry S. Truman [00:03:30] there, introducing him just as he had [00:03:32] promised. Well, in the years that [00:03:34] followed, the good folks at Westminster [00:03:36] College decided perhaps a more fitting [00:03:38] memorial would be in order. And so, Mr. [00:03:41] president. They found the remains of a [00:03:44] church in the United Kingdom right near [00:03:48] London. St. Mary Alderman [00:03:51] which had first been built in 1181 as a [00:03:54] Christian church parish church used in [00:03:57] continuous service from the 12th [00:03:58] century. It was destroyed by the great [00:04:01] fire of London in 1666 [00:04:05] after which it was rebuilt and [00:04:06] redesigned by the great Sir Christopher [00:04:08] Ren Sir Christopher Ren only for it to [00:04:11] be demolished again by the Blitz in [00:04:13] 1940. [00:04:14] And as it existed at this time in 1946, [00:04:18] it was basically just a pile of rubble [00:04:20] bricks destroyed by the Nazi onslaught. [00:04:22] The people of Westminster took that [00:04:24] church and those bricks and brought them [00:04:27] to the site of Churchill's famous speech [00:04:29] and rebuilt it. You can see a picture of [00:04:31] it here with a statue of Churchill [00:04:34] giving his famous address. St. Mary [00:04:35] Alderman Berry is re-imagined by Sir [00:04:37] Christopher Ren, a church that existed [00:04:40] for a thousand years, standing for the [00:04:43] rights of liberty and conscience, [00:04:45] standing for the deepest principles of [00:04:47] mankind that this nation has always [00:04:49] itself stood for. brought from the UK to [00:04:53] the heart of the United States in [00:04:54] central Missouri and rebuilt there. I [00:04:57] can't help but think, Mr. President, of [00:04:58] the symbolism that these civilizational [00:05:01] values, these sinnus of our Christian [00:05:04] civilization [00:05:05] defended for so long in the United [00:05:07] Kingdom, but finding their true home in [00:05:09] the United States of America. Just as [00:05:11] that church was rebuilt in the heart of [00:05:13] Missouri, so in the heart of this [00:05:14] country, still the defense of the West [00:05:16] lives on. moral courage and moral [00:05:19] clarity burns on. And as Churchill gave [00:05:22] voice to those principles in that day, [00:05:24] this building now stands in Fulton, [00:05:26] Missouri, is a testament to what we [00:05:28] believe in, to what we stand for, and to [00:05:31] the moral purpose that continues to [00:05:33] animate us in 2025. [00:05:36] Since that time, that building and that [00:05:38] location has been turned into a national [00:05:41] Churchill Museum by the folks at [00:05:43] Westminster. And today, Mr. President, [00:05:46] we have just passed legislation that [00:05:48] will finally recognize this most [00:05:50] significant site commemorating a most [00:05:53] significant event as a national historic [00:05:56] landmark that the National Park Service [00:05:58] will administer and maintain [00:06:01] so that generations of Americans and [00:06:04] people of goodwill everywhere can come [00:06:06] to that site and learn about Churchill [00:06:08] speech and perhaps more fundamentally [00:06:10] learn about the principles of liberty [00:06:12] and conscience and faith and moral [00:06:16] virtue on which this nation and indeed [00:06:18] the hold of the west were founded. [00:06:22] This is an appropriate moment, I think, [00:06:24] as we close this year to honor the [00:06:26] legacy of Winston Churchill, the legacy [00:06:28] of Westminster College, and indeed the [00:06:31] legacy of the West. May we do our part [00:06:35] always to defend it. Thank you, Mr. [00:06:37] President. I sore.