SPRING 2006 • NUMBER 130 - Winston Churchill

1706. Marlborough’s English, Dutch,and German troops decisively defeateda French army at Ramillies-Offus, nearNamur, Flanders, on the bank of theRiver Mehaigne in Brabant, clearingthe French from the SpanishNetherlands, and led to the capture ofAntwerp, Bruges, and Ghent.Marlborough enjoyed politicalascendancy, largely as a result of hiswife Sarah’s influence over QueenAnne. But the Duchess of Marlboroughlater quarreled with Anne, thewar was costly, and Marlborough wasaccused of prolonging it for his personalglory; and in 1710 the Whigsfell, yielding power to Henry St. John(later Viscount Bolingbroke).The Duke was falsely chargedwith misappropriating public fundsand was dismissed (1711) from office.He returned to England from selfimposedexile upon the accession ofGeorge I in 1714 and was given chiefcommand of the army again, but hetook little further part in public affairs.—Answers.comCHURCHILL ON RAMILLIESarlborough cannot be robbed“Mof the laurels of Ramillies.The Schellenberg, his detractors said,had been won by the Margrave.Blenheim was the conception andachievement of Prince Eugene. Butneither of these explanations coveredthe amazing event of May 23. Herethe world saw Marlborough alone,without a council of war, achieving amilitary masterpiece seldom equalledand never surpassed. This was his victoryand his alone. Ramillies belongsto that rare class of battles foughtbetween equal forces of the highestquality wherein decisive success atcomparatively small loss is gainedthrough the manoeuvres of a commander-in-chief.It will rank for ever withRosssbach and Austerlitz as an exampleof what a general can do with men.”—Winston S. Churchill,Marlborough: His Life and Times, vol.V (of VI), pp. 149-50. New York:Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937. ,AROUND & ABOUTChurchill is only fourth on the list of longestlivedPrime Ministers, outlasted by three wholived to at least 92 years of age: James Callahan (justdied last year), Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home. WSC died at 90, just ahead of Gladstone and Heath (both 89).k k kIn The Coldest Winter: A Stringer in Liberated Europe (Holt, $18) memoiristPaula Fox “zeroes in on a limited number of evocative details andanecdotes....The author of six novels gives us potent snippets in place ofa standard plot. On a walk in Hyde Park in London, Fox passes a drunkenand weepy Winston Churchill. The mascara he wore for filmed interviews,Fox writes, ‘was puddling under his eyes before it ran down hisplump cheeks.’” It seems that Ms. Fox is still writing novels.k k kSpeaking to military wives, George W. Bush issued an eloquent andurgent defense of his doctrine: the theory that we have to use forceto “take the fight to the enemy,” which he more clearly than ever definedas “radical Islam.” The speech wasn’t so much a defense of the war inIraq as it was an attempt to portray himself in the embattled mold ofRonald Reagan and Winston Churchill, men who endured witheringpolitical fire at home for the sake of fighting totalitarianism in the world.The message: come after me, take me down, and you cripple the fightfor freedom. It’s audacious—Democrats will call it outrageous—but that’sthe argument he essentially is making. And the big-think, crusadingspeech had another purpose: to inspire the man who made it. The keyaudience for that speech, in a way, was the President himself. He wasamping up for the fight. —HOWARD FINEMAN, MSNBC.COM, 27OCT05k k khe Myth of Stability.” There were then, as there are now, many who“Turged preemptive capitulation. In 1933, the Oxford Union resolved“that this House refuses in any circumstances to fight for King andCountry.” Hitler must have been encouraged to hear that. With theexception of Churchill, most Europeans were less outraged than intimidated—unwillingto endanger the “stability” that followed the first globalwar. The result: in less than a decade most of the continent was underHitler’s jackboot. To outsiders, the Middle East may have appeared stablebefore Bush came to office. In fact, it has long been a region wherepeople are deprived of basic human rights, and where vast oil wealth isenjoyed by ruling classes while masses endure grinding poverty.—CLIFFORD D. MAY, SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWS SERVICE, 26OCT05k k kHow does he do it? It’s not likely his boyish hairdo, which at timesresembles Dennis the Menace more than Tom Cruise. And it’sprobably not his speaking style, which will never be confused withWinston Churchill’s. So what is it? Local political consultant Floyd Cirulisays Denver mayor John Hickenlooper manages to come across as“the non-politician. He isn’t slick,” Ciruli said. Moreover, he “can makefun of himself, do silly things.” Sounds enough like WSC to us! ,FINEST HOUR 129 / 11