Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/191

 Normandy, to the King of France, with a letter of defiance couched in language so elegant and so polite that I can scarcely believe any Englishman wrote it."

This was a happy beginning, and the end was no less felicitous. When Edward landed in France he found that Louis the Eleventh, who hated fighting, was all for peace; and that the Duke of Burgundy, who generally fought the wrong people at the wrong time, was in no condition for war. Therefore he patched up a profitable truce, and went back to England, a wiser and a richer man, on better terms with his enemy than with his ally. "For where our advantage lies, there also is our heart."

The peculiar irritation engendered by what Americans discreetly designate as "entangling alliances" was forced upon my perception in early youth, when I read the letters of a British officer engaged in fighting the Ashanti.