Remarks in Support of a Fundraising Drive for a Winston Churchill Memorial Library at Westminster College, Missouri

Senator Symington, Senator Long, Governor Dalton, distinguished Ambassador, my friends:

I am honored that you would ask me to participate in this ceremony launching a project that is dedicated to a great national leader, a great world statesman, and, above all, a great human being, Sir Winston Churchill. Sir Winston's place in the history of freedom is assured. During the war he symbolized the heroic resistance and defiance of all free men to tyranny.

In his own lifetime he has come to embody, as perhaps no other living leader has, a statesmanship that serves all men's desires for peace with freedom and peace with dignity. His address at Westminster College in Missouri in March of 1946 was not only prophetic but timeless. With the historic quality that is distinctly his, Sir Winston said, "If we adhere faithfully to the charter of the United Nations, if we walk forward in sedate and sober strength seeking no one's land or treasure, seeking to lay no arbitrary control upon the thoughts of men, if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the high roads of the future will be clear not only for us, but for all, not only for our time, but for a century to come."

This counsel is still sound today. The project to transfer the remains of this historic English church and reconstruct and rededicate it in the heartland of the United States is, as Sir Winston Churchill himself said, "an imaginative concept." It demonstrates in an unmistakable way the deep affection and esteem and respect which this great man has in this country. As the President of the United States, and a fellow citizen of Sir Winston, I am pleased and proud that you, who are gathered here today, have had the foresight, the imagination, and the energy to undertake this most worthwhile project as a tribute to one of the greatest world leaders of our time.

And I am honored beyond compare that I should be here with the distinguished outstanding Americans from the State of Missouri and many from Washington, including the most able Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who has rendered long service, and all of you who have taken such a vital interest in this project. It is becoming. It is worthwhile. And it is something that gives me great pleasure.

Thank you very much.