Westminster College, where Winston S. Churchill's ``Iron Curtain speech'' signaled the start of the Cold War in 1946, hopes Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will deliver an epilogue. ``We're hoping that a world figure who has played such a major role in East-West politics would see the importance of returning to the place where the Cold War was first defined,'' college president Harvey Saunders said. Fulton, a community of 11,000, has asked Sen. Christopher S. Bond, R-Mo., to help try to get Gorbachev to speak at Westminster in June when he visits the United States for a summit meeting with President Bush. While out of office as Britain's prime minister, Churchill was persuaded by President Truman to come to Fulton to accept an honorary degree. In his March 1946 lecture, Churchill said, ``From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the (European) continent.'' The phrase drew little immediate attention from the media, but soon it became part of the Cold War glossary.
