Nothing is at first sight more wearisome than the long line of alliances, triple and quadruple, the endless negotiations, the interminable congresses, the innumerable treaties, which make up the history of Europe during the earlier half of the eighteenth century; nor is it easy to follow with patience the meddlesome activity of English diplomacy during that period, its protests and interventions, its subsidies and guarantees, its intrigues and finessings, its bluster and its lies. But wearisome as it all is, it succeeded in its end, and its end was a noble one. Of the twenty-five years between the Revolution and the Peace of Utrecht all but five were years of war, and the five were a mere breathing-space in which the combatants on either side were girding themselves for fresh hostilities. That the twenty-five years which followed were for Europe as a whole a time of peace was due in great measure to the zeal with which England watched over the settlement that had been brought about at Utrecht. To a great extent her efforts averted war altogether; and when war could not be averted she brought it within as narrow limits and to as speedy an end as was possible. Diplomacy spent its ingenuity in countless choppings and changings of the smaller territories about the Mediterranean and elsewhere; but till the rise of Prussia under Frederick the Great it secured Europe as a whole from any world-wide struggle. Nor was this maintenance of European peace all the gain which the attitude of England brought with it. The stubborn policy of the Georgian statesmen has left its mark on our policy ever since. In struggling for peace and for the sanctity of treaties, even though the struggle was one of selfish interest, England took a ply which she has never wholly lost. Warlike and imperious as is her national temper, she has never been able to free herself from a sense that her business in the world is to seek peace alike for herself and for the nations about her, and that the best security for peace lies in her recognition, amidst whatever difficulties and seductions, of the force of international engagements and the sanctity of treaties. The sentiment has no doubt been deepened by other convictions, by convictions of at once a higher and a lower stamp, by a growing sense of the value of peace to an industrial nation, as by a growing sense of the moral evil and destructiveness of war. But strong as is the influence of both these sentiments on the peace-loving temper of the English people, that temper itself sprang from another source. It sprang from the sense of responsibility for the peace of the world, as a necessary condition of tranquillity and freedom at home, which grew into life with the earlier years of the eighteenth century. [Sidenote: England's intellectual influence.]