THESE VITAL SPEECHES

48
CICERO SPEECHWRITING AWARDS
February of 1941. FDR had sent
Churchill an expression of support
for Britain. Churchill said:
“We shall not fail or falter; we shall
not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden
shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials
of vigilance and exertion will wear
us down. “
And then:
“Give us the tools, and we will finish
the job.”
Now of course I must acknowledge
that Churchill’s great oratory was the
product of many influences.
Churchill had read Gibbon and Macaulay.
He was intimately acquainted
with the King James Bible and the
plays of Shakespeare. He had memorized
reams of poetry. He had studied
the speeches of all the great parliamentary
leaders who had preceded him—
Pitt, Burke, Disraeli, Gladstone—and
his father, Lord Randolph Churchill.
He was a journalist; he had an eye for
detail and a flair for vivid language.
He is supposed to have read over 5,000
books and had a vocabulary of 65,000
words—two or three times as many as
the average person.
And yet …………..
And yet for all that it was Cockran
whom he credited for his prowess as a
speaker.
I began this talk with a quote from
Churchill, in which he said of Cockran,
“He was my model.” I did not tell you
when or to whom Churchill said that.
He said it in 1953, at the end of his
career. And he said it to Adlai Stevenson.
Stevenson had been the Democratic
Party’s candidate for president
a year earlier. (He lost to Dwight
Eisenhower.) According to Stevenson,
Churchill then went on to quote—from
memory—long passages from speeches
that Cockran had given over half a
century before.
But there is even stronger evidence
of the esteem in which Churchill held
Cockran. In 1946, at Westminster
College in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill
gave the single most important of his
post-war addresses. He called it, “The
Sinews of Peace.” We know it as the
“Iron Curtain” speech: “From Stettin
in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,
an iron curtain has descended across
the Continent.”
Churchill had been turned out of
Downing Street the previous year.
He was then leader of the opposition.
But he knew that his speech
in Fulton would put Churchill back
where Churchill knew that Churchill
belonged—smack dab at the center of
world affairs.
The speech was a major news event.
Churchill was introduced by the President
of the United States, Harry S.
Truman, and his words were broadcast
throughout the whole nation.
And it was in that speech that he
chose to honor the memory of his
mentor and model. He said this:
“I have often used words which I
learned fifty years ago from a great
Irish-American orator, a friend of
mine, Mr. Bourke Cockran. ‘There is
enough for all. The earth is a generous
mother; she will provide in plentiful
abundance food for all her children
if they will but cultivate her soil in
justice and in peace.’”
That was Churchill’s favorite quote
from Cockran.
Cockran had told Churchill to
imitate Burke—to “master the English
language as a man masters a horse.”
Churchill did more than master the
English language; some said that he
“mobilized it and sent it into battle.”
Would he have been able to do that
if he had never met Bourke Cockran?
We’ll never know. We know only this:
To the end of his days, Churchill was
conscious that that he owed Cockran a
great debt. And, through Churchill, so
do we all.
Thank you.
WINNER: INAUGURAL SPEECH
“A Legacy Born of Hope”
By Mark L. Kelly for Elizabeth Davis,
President, Furman University
Thank you, Robert.
What an extraordinary week
this has been.
And what an honor to be formally
installed as the President of Furman
University.
I am grateful to each and every
one of you here, and to those who
are viewing the broadcast on and
off campus, that you have come
together today to celebrate all that
is extraordinary and wonderful about
this University.
Charles Tompkins and Gary Malvern,
I kept trying to sneak into the
auditorium to hear the prelude selections.
Thank you for setting the tone
for our ceremony. Les Hicken and the
Wind Ensemble, Hugh Floyd and the
Furman Singers, you all are amazing.
Thank you for stirring our souls
with your music. And Jay Bocook,
your Gloriana is beautiful and a fitting
accompaniment for official university
processions. I’m humbled that it was
commissioned for today’s ceremony.
Delivered at Furman University,
Greenville, S.C., March 19, 2015
Mayor White and Mayor McCall,
thank you for representing the local
communities in which we live and
work. Your spirit and vision are models
for us all as we seek to be meaningful
partners in the community.
To my colleagues representing
sister institutions and societies,
thank you for honoring Furman with
your presence. Educating a nation,
indeed the world, is accomplished
through the collective energies of institutions
with different missions and
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