Use the power of metaphor to persuade
Churchill’s Greatest Speech?
In 1946 Churchill was a beaten man. The previous year, he had lost the prime ministership after his Conservative government has suffered an overwhelming election defeat.
Churchill wanted to warn the Western world about the spreading menace of Soviet communism, but he worried that Americans wouldn’t listen to someone who was now just the leader of an opposition party, rather than the head of an elected government.
Churchill’s opportunity to convince American’s came when he was invited to speak in Fulton, Missouri. He knew that he had to paint a vivid, graphic picture of what was happening in countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia.
He toyed with words like “Soviet imperialism,” “militarism,” and “tyranny,” but he rejected these as shapeless abstractions. None of these would paint a vivid enough picture in his listeners’ minds.
On the train trip down to Missouri, Churchill scanned his map of Europe. To highlight the spread of communism, he drew a black pen line from the Baltic Sea through Poland down to the Adriatic Sea. He retraced the line, searching his mind for the right image to describe the Soviet threat.
The inspiration came at 2 a.m. during an overnight stop in Salem, Illinois, when the right word picture appeared — which Churchill quickly added to his speech.
The next day, Churchill delivered the words that would mobilize the United States and move it to action:
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”
The iron-curtain metaphor became one of the galvanizing images of the Cold War. When China fell to Mao Tse-tung’s communists in 1949, the metaphor changed to bamboo curtain.
The iron curtain speech was, according to James C. Humes (author of Churchill: Speaker of the Century), Churchill’s greatest speech.
Why was it the greatest? Because a single speech triggered a change in American feelings about the Soviet Union (America’s wartime ally), and started the Americans to rearm.
Whenever you present a persuasive case, look for an organizing metaphor. The right metaphor will clinch a deal or sale.
Popularity: 80% [?]
