The king of Dahomey, in the African interior, was not so wrong, unfortunately, when he recently told an Englishman, ‘God made the world for war; all realms, great and small, have always practised it, although on different principles.’

Unhappily, history proves that war is, in a certain sense, the habitual state of mankind, which is to say that human blood must flow without interruption somewhere or other on the globe, and that for every nation, peace is only a respite.

The closing of the temple of Janus under Augustus can be cited; there was one year in Charlemagne's warlike reign (the year of 790) when there was no war. One can point to a short period after the Peace of Ryswick in 1697 and another equally short after that of Karlowitz in 1699 when there was no war, not only in Europe, but even in all the known world. But these are merely exceptions. Moreover, who can know what is happening over the entire globe at a given time?

The century that is just ending began, for France, with a cruel war that was not terminated until the Treaty of Rastadt in 1714. In 1719, France declared war on Spain; the Treaty of Paris put an end to it in 1727. The election of the king of Poland rekindled war in 1733; the peace was made in 1736. Four years later, the terrible War of the Austrian Succession broke out and lasted without interruption until 1748.