But that power, by its unachievable desire to be overlord of two hemispheres, was itself to precipitate events which would open the westward road.
The recurring hour in the cycle of history, when the issue of Autocracy against Democracy cleaves the world, struck for the men of the eighteenth century as the second half of that century dawned.

In our own day, happily, that issue has been perceived by the rank and file of the people.

In those darker days, as France and England grappled in that conflict of systems which culminated in the Seven Years' War, the fundamental principles at stake were clear to only a handful of thinking men.
But abstractions, whether clear or obscure, do not cause ambassadors to demand their passports.

The declaration of war awaits the overt act.
Behold, then, how great a matter is kindled by a little fire! The casus belli between France and England in the Seven Years' War--the war which humbled France in Europe and lost her India and Canada--had to do with a small log fort built by a few Virginians in 1754 at the Forks of the Ohio River and wrested from them in the same year by a company of Frenchmen from Canada.
The French claimed the valley of the Ohio as their territory; the English claimed it as theirs.

The dispute was of long standing.