AND THE RECURRENCE OF WAR. 273 



poleon's victorious career. The gradual crumbling away of the 

 Germanic emperor's sovereignty was doubtless due to the fact that 

 he was an elective and not a hereditary prince as was the case with 

 the kings of France and England, for example. As a result within 

 the Germanic Empire there grew up among the welter of small 

 feudal princelings the powerful political units of Hanover, Saxony, 

 Bavaria and Brandenburg, to name only the more important of the 

 developing German states. 



Whether in the west, or the center of Europe, however, the im- 

 portance of relatively small potentates gradually vanished before the 

 rise of the new order of political entities, such as France and 

 England and Brandenburg. As a result, questions began to arise 

 between these more powerful political organisms, while the ques- 

 tions growing out of the relations of individuals to one another fell 

 more into the background with an ever-growing tendency to 

 disappear. 



For it was not to the interest of the king or elector or however 

 the supreme overlord of the new order of political organisms might 

 be called, to have their vassals, whether great or small, quarreling 

 and fighting. A continual warfare among the vassals and subjects 

 of the overlord meant an impairment of their sources of revenue and 

 a corresponding loss of power and influence in dealing with their 

 equals about them. And as a consequence the new supreme sover- 

 eigns sought by every means in their power to curb the carrying on 

 of private war by their barons. As this war of individuals was 

 gradually suppressed, until to-day in any well-administered state it 

 does not prevail, war began, however, to occur between the newly 

 developing states. As humanity in western and central Europe was 

 delivered gradually of the curse of private war by the growth of the 

 institution of the kingly power, as personified in the royal courts 

 backed up by the police power of the king, there grew up, however, 

 in place of the disappearing strife between individuals, war between 

 the newly forming nations. The rising power of the kings and their 

 like had rescued the European peoples from the continual state of 

 armed peace and war which thrived under the feudal regime. But 

 with the rise of the new nations, for private war there was sub- 



