From 1748 to 1756 the country remained at peace, but it was of the kind compatible with continuous “military operations.” Both in the East Indies and on the continent of North America and among the islands of the West Indies, the British Government of that time had to deal with a more violent version of what we have seen happen in our day in the valleys of the Nile and the Congo. The main outlines of the struggle were given at the beginning of the last chapter. On the frontier of Nova Scotia the two states were in peculiar contact of irritation. The frontier had never been clearly marked, and the French strove to delimit it in their own favour by a characteristic mixture of pertinacious diplomatic pettifogging and violence. In the East the intrigues of Dupleix with the native princes of the Carnatic aimed at ruining the commerce of the English company by cutting off the establishments on the coast of Coromandel from access to the interior. On the continent of America the seventy thousand or so French in Canada and Louisiana were incessantly endeavouring, not only to recover the greater part of Nova Scotia, but to bar the million and a half of English settlers from access to the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Resolute action on the part of the British Government would probably have averted war, but the Duke of Newcastle, who was the prevailing politician of the day, was intent on Parliamentary management. The king too was rendered nervous by fears for his hereditary dominions in Hanover. From sheer want of vigorous direction on our own part we drifted, through a succession of small conflicts, into open though unavowed war in 1755, and into formally declared war in 1756. The situation was that of 1739, with differences. Then we had begun with the Spaniards, and had only come into collision with the French later on. Spain, in this case, did not intervene till the very close, and in an hour of folly. Once again, too, France became entangled in a great European land war, and was unable to devote her whole attention to the sea. We engaged in the land war as allies of Frederick of Prussia and in defence of Hanover, but our main attention was devoted to the sea and to our colonies.