The Iron Curtain

Last time I saw it all coming

and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen

and to the world，but no one paid any attention.

Up till the year 1933 or even 1935,

Germany might have been saved from

the awful fate which has overtaken

her and we might all have beenspared

the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind.

There never was a war in all history

easier to prevent by timely action than

the one which has just desolated

such great areas of the globe.

It could have been prevented in my belief

without the firing of a single shot,

and Germany might be powerful,

prosperous and honoured to-day;

but no one would listen and

one by one we were all sucked into the

awful whirlpool.

We surely, ladies and gentlemen, I put it to you,

surely, We surely must not let that happen again.

（...）From Stettin in the Baltic to （....）

Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain

has descended across the Continent.

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,

（...）What is needed is a settlement, （...）

and the longer this is delayed,

the more difficult it will be

and the greater our dangers will become.

From what I have seen of

our Russian friends and Allies during the war,

I am convinced that there is nothing

they admire so much as strength,

and there is nothing for which

they have less respect than for weakness,

especially military weakness.