Word: utrecht
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...bits of gossip ever got through the cold, exclusive circle of Dutch nobility that surrounded the court. She was the good mother, the conscientious leader, the faithful churchgoer. Because of her strong Calvinism, her words came to carry almost a scriptural weight among the nobility of The Hague and Utrecht, the patrician families of Amsterdam, all the older townspeople and villagers in the strongly Protestant North. Nor could it be said that she was intolerant; Jews and Catholics came to idolize...
When that line no longer holds, the next retreat is to Amsterdam, leaving a flooded area from Ijssel Lake to the Waal and Maas Rivers to protect the western heart of the country including Utrecht and Rotterdam. Stranded in the middle of this flood would be the ex-Kaiser's home at Doom. Another secondary defense line would back up the main water line, running southwest from Utrecht to Breda, near the Belgian border...
Belgium was suspiciously alert last week but denied having taken yet her most drastic defense step of all: pulling plugs in the Albert Canal to impede any German advance with a flood. The Dutch, however, did say they were flooding their country, at least experimentally, around Utrecht. Much weaker than the 'Belgians in fortifications along their frontier, the Dutch prepared if necessary to open their Zuider Zee dikes and inundate most of their central provinces, abandoning their entire northeast to the invader and taking national refuge in the Rotterdam-Utrecht-Amsterdam triangle. To give their waters time to rise...
...illustration of this fallibility he quoted the varying judgements of posterity expressed in Winston Churchill's "Life of Marlborough" on the Peace of Utrecht and the career of the Duke of Marlborough...
...defense, resounding with rich invective against Marlborough's Tory enemies: Harley, St. John, Queen Anne, Dean Swift. But it adds up to something less than Author Churchill intended. What he proves, chiefly, is that Marlborough was merely no worse than his enemies. They signed a pussyfoot treaty at Utrecht but probably prevented a revolution of the war-weary English masses. They drove Marlborough to exile, but he revenged himself with interest when he returned to riches and honors at Queen Anne's death. They hatched the great South Sea Bubble swindle, but Marlborough forced the Government to build...