ascertain generally which of them are likely to prove the most lasting or the least remediable.
2. Apart from the special and temporary circumstances affecting Hereditary jealousies and antipathies between States. the political relations of two States which urge them into War, it always happens, and must happen in the case of European Wars, that the true ground of War can only be understood by conducting a lengthened and exact historical inquiry into the past relations to each other of the two Belligerent States. These relations have not only produced, in the way of direct parentage, the existing relations, for the explanation of which they must needs be adduced, but they have evolved a peculiar class of national sentiments in each State, and have, as it were, imparted to each a special aspect or characteristic moral bearing in regard to the other. The result is that each State has, in respect of every other one, a definite kind and amount of sensibility, shared in both by the citizens and the Government, which is the product of innumerable events in the past, as well as of the reciprocal influences of the national character of the two countries. This sensibility is at once a source and a kind of incubating medium of all the strong feelings of irritation, impatience, rivalry, dislike, malice, revenge, which incite to War and make it popular.
This assertion needs little proof, or it would be easy to establish it in the case of any pair of the civilized States of the world. All other circumstances being equal, the sensibility of England, and English citizens, in respect of any dispute which might present itself between England, on the one hand, and (say) (Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United States is different for every one of these States. No doubt the mere magnitude and political importance of of these States, and the insignificance of others, may have something to do with this feeling. But many of these States which seem small are stronger, in some points, than larger ones, through
