Is this what the president of Europe will be doing?

‘C'est magnfique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre!' (It may be superb, but it isn't war!) Marshall Bosquet remarked about the Charge of the British Light Brigade at the battle of Balaclava in 1854. Military ineptitude then sent a small brigade of cavalry to attack multiple batteries of Russian guns, with predictable consequences.

The incident descended easily into legend. ‘Into the Valley of Death rode the Six Hundred,' wrote Tennyson, while in the hands of the Irish playwright, Bernard S...