I am glad to hear from my friend, your Oxford countryman, Mr. C.R.L. Fletcher, the author of a brilliantly written ‘Introductory History of England’ in four volumes, that the story is told in substantially the same terms on your side, by all the authorities on the subject: Mundy’s ‘Life and Correspondence of Lord Rodney’ (vol. i. p. 180); Laughton in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’; Captain Mahan in his ‘Influence of Sea Power in History,’ p. 377. We could tell many, many stories of that kind, but let these two be sufficient for our purpose to-day. And yet, even with all these extenuating circumstances, how pitiful it would have been if this enmity had been continuous! But it was not, and even far from it! Even the worst of all our wars, the Hundred Years’ War, was interrupted by very numerous and very long truces lasting years and even decades of years! In fact, that war consisted generally of mere raids with handfuls of men, though it must be said that they often did harm out of all proportion to their numbers. As to the other wars in more modern times they were pleasantly intermingled with interludes of co-operation and alliance. The simple enumeration of them is instructive and may even appear surprising. In the sixteenth century there was a temporary alliance between your Henry VIII. and our Francis the First, against the Emperor of Germany, Charles V. In fact Henry VIII., at first, had allied himself with the German Emperor against the French king, but when the latter, attacked from all cardinal points (Spain and most of Italy were then in the hands of the Emperor), had been beaten at Pavia and taken prisoner to Madrid, your King perceived his mistake, _i.e._ England’s ultimate danger. He consequently offered his alliance to Francis for the restoration of this balance of power, which, for want of something better, was the guarantee of the independence of all states. In Mignet’s study[4] of these times I find this extract from your King’s instructions to his ambassadors in France, in March 1526, as to the conditions forced upon the French king, in his Spanish prison, by the Emperor of Germany: ‘They [the English ambassadors] shall infer what damage the crown of France may and is likely to stand in by the said conditions—this be the way to bring him [Charles] to the monarchy of Christendom.’ You know that, after all, the world-wide ambition of the then Emperor of Germany was defeated, to the point that he resigned in despair and ended his life in a monastery.