The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-01-31
STRANGE CAUSES OF VAR.

Eollies and Caprices That Have Led to
 International slaughter-Venezuelan pis-
 pute-origin of the Seven Years' War
 he Omen Of the Twelve Vultures-Spite
 Nars-Natlons Ruined by Whim'.
 (From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat9
 The swamp lands that form the ob- ject of the boundary dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain have been described as mosquito bogs, not worth the days wages of a surveying party but if they should really be made the pretext of an international war, the in significance, of the cause would at least not be aggravated by the lack of prece- dents.
 Campaigns involving the destruction of fourishing cities and the ruin of whole nations have been undertaken to gratify the caprices of indiViduals-ca- prices often as frivolous as the whim of the Persian monarch who prided him self on being able to fill his banquet hall with the products of his own terrl- tories. Persia and its vast dependent eies produced the best cereals, the choicest wines, spices, oils, vegetables, fish and meats, but the finest figs un- questionably came from Athens, and the ruler of Western Asia decided to make the area of his empire include the Attic fig gardens.
 A chief of the Cretan confederation, too, is said to have attacked the for midable Polycrates because he thought the harbors of Samos more convenient t1a,, of F., tcfn nrI a Teuton princes fondness for Italian wines led to the adventure-trip across the Alps and the murderous battle of Aquae Sextiae.
 Anecdotes of that sort might be as- cribed to the misrepresentations of an cient historians, but there is not the | slightest doubt that Russia's interfer- ence in the seven years war was due to the personal spite of the Empress Eliz- abeth. If We may credit the memoirs of tihe Princess Radziville. the morals of the czarina were quite as loose as those of her successor, but she lacked the wit and the magnanimity of the ac- compllshed Catherine, and plotted ven- | geance against the critics of her ex- | travaganzas. The most outspoken of those critics was Frederick the Great, whose supper parties were spiced with merciless sarcasm at the expense of his crowned contemporaries He quizzsd | the bigotry of Maria Theresa, the stu pidity of King George, the indolence Of the grand Turk, and lost no opportunt- l ty to poke fun at the Crosse Catin du | Nord," as he called the ponderous lady on the throne of the Russian empire. On one occasion Adjutant Winterfeldt complained about the awkwardness of the seven-footers whom the Prussian recruiting sergeants had cribbed from all parts of Christian Europe, regard | less of their military qualifications. There's one fellow who is really not worth the salt on his 'bread,' said the | adjutant; The is seven feet two and is heavy as a donkey, but also every bit as thick-headed. He has not brains enough to deliver the simplest message, and really do not know what we shall do with him.
 Send him to St. Petersburg D l laughed the king. "I bet you he will make his fortune in half a year, Bull garian, is he? Well, no matter what l language he talks, he needs only to be seen to be appreciated"
 I A Russian spy reported that conver- satfon in all it's original ribaldry, and soon after the czarina's reply came in the form of a Cossack army, reinforced l from year to year and wasting, Eastern Prussia till the total of their havoc could be estimated only by hundreds of millions. In the province of Brandon burg alone they destroyed fourteen towns and eighty-two villages, and at i the battle of Kunersdorf came so near capturing the king himself that the af- ter-effect of his experience made him ten yeals older, and also as much wiser, i to judge from the extreme respectful ness of his subsequent remarks upon I the state of affairs at the court of St. | Petersburg.
 The participation of France in the same war was prompted by similar cause. During the two first Silesian l campaigns France and Prussia had 1 been natural allies, but the kings jokes at the expense of Mime. Pompadour could neither be forgotten nor forgiven, and eventually threw the weight of eighty-fve thousand French soldiers | into the scale of the Austrian party. 4 l Hcy, lCU, COlIlulIlleu UdIUtt1OuS uGNdS- 1 tations, and altogether it would not ba an exaggeration to say that the luxury of sarcasm cost the great king a total of two billion dollars.
 Napoleon I. made England pay a per haps still higher price for the partial qualification of their bugbear mania. Previous to the breach of Amiens he had tried his best to conciliate the good
 will of the English-speaking nations, and soon succeeded in changing the
 hostile attitude of the American press, but the Old England grannies of both sexes had got it in their heads that the dictator of the French republic was a
 monster of private and public vices, and that the interests of moral man. kind in general, as we'll as of England
 in particular, demanded his prompt
 suppression. Pelletiers' magazine and
 scores of English papers poured out ceaseless mud-torrents of islander, and
 Parliament voted an appropriation of
 sixty million pounds to enforce the
 blockade of every French seaport from | Marseilles to Port au Prince. "They
 will ruin our commerce." said the Cor
 sican Caesar, "but by heavens, if they exclude us from the ocean, am going to exclude them from the continent
 and the history of the next seven years proved how near he came to fulfilling | I,j1