United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The chief germ of dissension lay in the fact that the British blockade, which was defended by its authors as being merely an extension of the rights of sea warfare to square with the progress of the modern military machine, was met on America's part only by paper protests, while our own extension of the same rights by means of submarine warfare was treated as a casus belli.
Day by day war grew more imminent, and at last the Duchess took occasion to call Constantine and Manuel into her private chamber, and with many tears told them the whole story at large, explaining the casus belli, dilating on the indignity which she suffered at the hands of the Duke if as was believed, he really kept a mistress in secret, and beseeching them in most piteous accents to do the best they could to devise some expedient whereby the Duke's honour might be cleared, and her own peace of mind assured.
As they paid very little attention to the orders of the Government, they supplied the Sultan with any number of casi belli, and were often ready to turn their arms against the power to which they professed allegiance.
The blood was already careering at full speed through his veins, and the palpitations of his heart were loud enough to be heard by the ear. Oh, beauty, beauty! terrima causa belli, thou dost play the devil with the hearts of men! Who is there who doth not wish to look upon thee, from the saint to the sinner? None.
It was known, before his imprisonment at Louvestein, that he entertained these sentiments: he avows them in the dedication to Lewis XIII. of his treatise de Jure Belli et Pacis. "I shall never cease," he says in a letter to his brother, "to use my utmost endeavours for establishing peace among Christians; And, if I should not succeed, it will be honourable to die in such an enterprise."
He soon discovered that the story had got about the village that Maurice Kirkwood was the victim of an "antipathy," whatever that word might mean in the vocabulary of the people of the place. If he suspected the channel through which it had reached the little community, and, spreading from that centre, the country round, he did not see fit to make out of his suspicions a domestic casus belli.
They may not have the same gift of gratuitous and irresponsible truculence as their German cousins, in the same alarming degree; but as was said in an earlier passage, they too are ready to fight on provocation. They are patriotic to a degree; indeed to such a degree that anything which visibly touches the national prestige will readily afford a casus belli.
Napoleon was irresolute, although it appeared to him that war with Prussia was the only way to recover his prestige after the mistakes of the Mexican expedition. But Mexico had absorbed the marrow of the French army, and the emperor was not quite ready for war. He must find some pretence for abandoning his designs on Luxemburg, any attempt to seize which would be a plain casus belli.
As a Hollander no doubt he felt deeply in a matter in which Hollanderism was the casus belli; as public prosecutor it was his duty to prosecute, not to judge; and one prefers to think that in peculiar and trying circumstances he forgot the pledge he had given and remembered only the cause of his party.
It was a rather different casus belli from that which the worthy clergyman would have preferred before a council; but it "meets my views" precisely as to the validity of the objections urged against dancing. I would have women dance, and women only, because it is the most beautiful thing in the world.
Word Of The Day