Note 260 — VII FROM WAR TO PEACE AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE JUDICIAL SETTLEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL DISPUTES, DECEMBER 17, 1910

In connection with Washington's views, those of Franklin concerning amicable relations between great countries may appropriately be quoted. He wrote from Passy, on October 16, 1783, to his friend David Hartley, one of the British plenipotentiaries for the peace: "What would you think of a proposition, if I sh'd make it of a family compact between England, France, and America? America would be as happy as the Sabine girls if she could be the means of uniting in perpetual peace her father and her husband. What repeated follies are those repeated wars! You do not want to conquer and govern one another. Why, then, should you continually be employed in injuring and destroying one another? How many excellent things might have been done to promote the internal welfare of each country; what bridges, roads, canals, and other public works and institutions tending to the common felicity, might have been made and established with the money and men foolishly spent during the last seven centuries by our mad wars in doing one another mischief!" Works, ed. Smythe, IX, 107.