France and England in the Medieval and Early Modern Age

THE Great War is still too near us for it to be easy to study it dispassionately and set forth its events in due proportion. But one thing at least is clearly apparent. It is that the Anglo-French Alliance was the salvation of Europe. Alike in the first fierce resistance to overwhelming forces and in the final combination which secured victory in 1918, it was the indispensable condition of the triumph of the forces which made for freedom and progress. What was the basis of that alliance? Was it a temporary expedient brought about by accidental coincidence of interests and the inevitable necessity of uniting forces against a well-prepared common foe? Or was it based on such deeper harmonies of character, civilization, and ideal between the two nations that the alliance is likely to endure, and become the starting-point of a new series of Anglo-French relations differing, almost fundamentally, from those which history has known in the past?