War has been pronounced the condition of humanity; and it is certain that conflict of some kind rages everywhere and at all times. The most combative people on earth are the advocates of universal and perpetual peace. There is something essentially defiant in the action of men who avowedly seek the abolition of a custom that has existed since the days of Cain, and which was well known to those magnificent beasts that ranged over the earth's face long before man began to dream or was dreamed of. To fight seems a necessity of the animal nature, whether the animal be called tiger, bull, or man. Those who have fought assure us that there is a positive pleasure in battle. That clever young woman, Miss Flora Mac-Ivor, who passed most of her life in the very highest fighting society, assures us, that men, when confronted with each other, have a certain instinct for strife, as we see in other male animals, such as dogs, bulls, and so forth. It is even so; and, further, the fondness that men have for accounts and details of battles is another evidence of the popularity of war, and an absolute stumbling-block in the way of the Peace Society, which has the hardest of combats to fight. The journals of the world are at this time full of the details of a war such as that world has not witnessed since 1815, and in comparison with which even the Russian War was but a second-rate contest. The old quarrel between Austria and France, which has repeatedly caused the peace of Europe to be broken since the days of Frederick III. and Louis XI., has been renewed in our time with a fierceness and a vehemence and on a scale that would have astonished Francis I., Charles V., Richelieu, Turenne, Condé, Louis XIV., Eugène, and even Napoleon himself, the most mighty of whose contests with Austria alone cannot be compared with that which his nephew is now waging with the House of Lorraine. For, in 1805 and in 1809, Napoleon was not merely the ruler of France, but had at his control the resources of many other countries. Belgium and Holland were then at the command of France, and now they are independent monarchies, holding strictly the position of neutrals. In 1809, Napoleon had those very German States for his active allies that now threaten Napoleon III.; and some of the hardest fighting on the French side, in the first days of the campaign, was the work of Bavarians and other German soldiers. That part of Poland which then constituted the Grand Duchy of Warsaw was among his dependent principalities; and Russia sent an army to his aid. In 1805, Napoleon I. had far more of Italian assistance than Napoleon III. has had at the time we write; and in 1809, the entire Peninsula obeyed his decrees as implicitly as they were obeyed by France. Napoleon III. entered upon the war with the hereditary rival of his country with no other ally than Sardinia, though it is now evident that there was an "understanding" between him and the Czar, not pointing