... the state of war’, on the one hand, and ‘its acts’, on the other. A state of war can exist even in the absence of any acts of waron the part of either side. ‘War’, concluded Grotius, ‘is the ... maintained that the war between France and the Netherlands in1672 resulted from the irritation of the French King, Louis XIV, over the issuing of certain medals and the spreading of offensive jokes.15 ... from the standpoint of the newstatecraft, the period might be known more aptly as the Age of Calculation than as the Age of Reason. This calculation was in the spirit of the new sciences of mathematics...