Spider and Royce's antagonistic but fruitful writer-editor relationship goes back many years; at the time of the War of Verbals, a heated exchange between two powerful English-speaking nations (presumably the United States and Britain) and France over keeping French as the national language of the latter. Royce was only an assistant editor and Spider was not yet at the peak of his notoriety.
The long-standing adversarial but beneficial writer-editor partnership between Spider and Royce dates back many years; during a period of intense conflict between two powerful English-speaking nations (presumably the United States and Britain) and France over maintaining French as the official language of France, Royce was an assistant editor while Spider was not yet widely recognized.