k of their savage allies. By his own
strength alone he could not cope with the power entrenched beyond the
hills; so he halted. 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. The
French claim was based on discovery; the English claim, on the seato-sea
charters of Virginia and other colonies and on treaties with the Six
Nations. The French refused to admit the right of the Six Nations to
dispose of the territory. The English were inclined to maintain the
validity of their treaties with the Indians. Especially was Virginia so
inclined, for a large share of the Ohio lay within her chartered domain.

The quarrel had entered its acute phase in 1749, when both the rival
claimants took action to assert their sovereignty. The Governor of
Canada sent an envoy, Celoron de Blainville, with soldiers, to take
formal possession of the Ohio for the King of France. In the same year
the English organized in Virginia the Ohio Company for the colonization
of the same country; and summoned Christopher Gist, explorer, trader,
and guide, from his home on the Yadkin and dispatched him to survey the
land.

Then appeared on the scene that extraordinary man, Robert Dinwiddie,
Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, erstwhile cit