The Iron Duke

The Iron Duke X Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, was famous for»his courage, his profanity, and his blunt talk.He was his own man’s man and he dared to speak the truth as he saw it.

Perhaps the Duke’s most famous remark was to the effect that: “The Battle of Waterloo was won in the playing fields of Eton!” Eton of course, Ls one of England’s greatest socalled “public schools”. For five hundred years, and more, the people who inhabited the tiny island oft the coast or Europe have played a dominant role in world affairs. Fine schools have been available in England for this same length of time.

Why has the English language grown into such wide use that eventually it will probably become a universal tongue? Why.has English law attained its greatness and prestige? Why has the common man been successful in resisting oppression by kings and judges and tyrants when under the jurisdiction and power of the English “common law”, \\ here were these ideals of the “rights of man” born and nutured? Where did the champions of these rights attain both their ideals and the courage to fight for them? )

The Iron Duke said that England’s greatness lay'in her schools. History proves this to be true. These ideals of the freedom of the individual, is the base on which our western civilization is built- Today these ideals are in a desperate conflict with those of Russia, which holds that the state (or the community) is of sole importance and that the individual is nothing- But even Russia knows that the education ot the individual is essential to technological survival of the

Do the people of Rappahannock know less? We must have better schools. Our country, our way of life, cannot survive without good schools. H. G. W ells, in his Outline of His tor}', which is one of the best loved books of our time, said: “Hujnan history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”