ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER, SEPTEMBER 16, 1912, AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK NORMA THE EDITOR'S POINT OF VIEW ANGELL'S highly suggestive article on "How to Study the Problems of the War" represents a type of service to readers of The World Court Magazine not duplicated in any American publication. Attention is here called to the special announcement and request printed on page 13. Such special features indicate one line of development for our "Magazine of International Progress." To record their official points of view regarding responsibility for the war one government after another issued a Blue Book or a Yellow Book or an Orange Book or a Red Book, or some other colored book. Since the issue of who shall become responsible for lasting peace has now come to the forefront of international discussion, we devote space this month to a "Black-and-White" Book of Peace Diplomacy. The collection of extraordinary docu ments brings together for one connected reading permanently important material that is otherwise lost, is merely skimmed in the daily paper, or is not readily available as a check on misinterpretation. Is a new variety of peace-making diplomacy being evolved? By way of perspective on current plans for securing world peace the succinct and illuminating review of "Historic Proposals for Leagues of World Peace," by Professor Sterling E. Edmunds, is furnished to this number of The World Court Magazine. Comments on "The Scheme for a League of Nations," by H. N. Brailsford, throw one British sidelight at the present time. Plebiscites and purchase instead of conquest bring New West Indian Americans to us. Mr. Myers' article on the subject points out the international setting and significance of such a transfer. How to Study the Problems of the War T By NORMAN ANGELL Author of "The Great Illusion," "America and the World State" and HE librarian of one of the Great American public libraries stated recently that he had received for classification more than 2,000 books and pamphlets dealing with the war or the questions out of which it had arisen. An examination showed that none of these books or pamphlets was negligible; all had some good claim to attention and no study of the war and its causes could pretend to be exhaustive which did not take them into account. And when one thinks of the subjects that the study of this war involves, 2,000 books does not seem a very large number. The immediate cause was an incident of Balkan politics, and Balkan politics with all its welter of language and nationality difficultiesthe relations of Serbs, Bulgars, Roumanians, Turks, Greeks, Albanians, of the Moslems, the Catholics, the Orthodox and Unified Greek Churches; the influence and struggle for prestige within the Peninsula of the Austrian, Russian, German, Italian and British foreign policies-has absorbed the life studies of many students. THE MAZE OF ISSUES But the incident leading to the outbreak of war was also a question of Austrian policy, of the everlasting struggle between Germans, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Ruthenians, Italians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles; Of the issues of the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885, the tariff wars between Austria and Serbia, the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the formation of the Balkan League and the intrigues which provoked the Second Balkan War, which in turn takes us to the Turkish invasions, the emergence of the independent Balkan nations from Turkish supremacy; And this in turn touches Austrian and Russian policy and Russia's claim to be the leader and protector of the Slav peoples, her interference in Balkan politics and her designs on Constantinople; Which brings us to questions of the European Alliances, the Balance of Power; the conflict between Slav and Teuton; the development of German policy since unification; the wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870; the position of Prussia in Germany; the attitude of the Social Democrats; the difference between the new Germany and the old; the influence of the newer German philosophies of Nietzsche, Haeckel, Treitschke, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, as the reaction against those of Kant, Hegel and Fichte; The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and its effect on Franco-German relations; the problems arising from the partitions of Poland, between Prussia, Russia and Austria; German fear of the Slav menace; the influence of the pan-German school; German colonial and naval expansion and the course of AngloGerman relations; the formation of the Triple Alliance, the Dual Alliance, and the Franco-British Entente; the guarantee of Belgian neutrality And now we may add the question of the Roumanians in Transylvania, the Italians in the Trentino and Trieste, Italian interests in Dalmatia and Albania, the problem of Schleswig-Holstein, the position of Bohemia. QUESTIONS OF THE SETTLEMENT affairs of his life, and with scant leisure for public questions to find his way through this maze of material? How tackle two thousand books? WHY WE MUST HAVE AN OPINION The readiest solution seems to be to leave it to the expert. But which expert? Concerning Concerning the subjects upon which we have just touched, one great statesman like Lord Salis bury, has been of one opinion, and another great statesman, like Mr. Gladstone, has been of a diametrically opposed opinion. It is the public who, after all, have to decide between rival experts. And even when we have managed to agree on an expert, that expert, in the gravest mat The settlement raises questions of ters, leaves the final decision to the The principle of nationality, The use of plebiscites, The value of guarantees, The value of indemnities, public. Democracy and self-government would obviously be a sham unless he did. Again and again in his dispatches The validity of treaties and of inter- just before the outbreak of war, Sir national law, Edward Grey insisted that he must The broader questions of the rela- finally be guided in his decision by tions of States, The bearing upon politics of econom ics and of both upon strategy, The competition of armaments, The system of alliances and group ings of the powers, The alleged rivalry of nations, racy upon national policies, How is it humanly possible for the average man concerned with the daily the general feeling of the public. To say that in a matter like the war of the nations, matters of life or death for millions, which are going to affect the whole future of civilization, the mass of men can have no opinion but must leave it all to a governing few, is not only to reduce self-government and democracy to an absurdity, but is equivalent to saying that the mass of men have no moral responsibility for their gravest acts. WHAT IS OUR OPINION TO BE WORTH? So the responsibility is ours and we cannot shed it. Our opinion decides. What is that opinion to be worth? Is it to be, speaking quite frankly, blind and ignorant, guided by the temper of the moment, hypnotized by some passing feature which may momentarily have caught its attention to the exclusion of deeper and more permanent factors? Or will it have grasped such a general understanding of the broad outstanding issues as to disentangle essentials from non-essentials, to know what it wants and why it wants it, able at least to avoid a fundamentally vicious settlement containing the seeds of further trouble in the future, and able instead to lay at least the sound foundations of a better society? So we cannot just run away from the difficulty of having to know something of these very complex problems. Yet how can the average busy man-who after all makes up public opinion-in the often very pressing and harassing cares of business and the necessity of providing for his family, able to devote a scanty leisure to his public responsibilities, tackle a subject, the bibliography of which embraces two thousand books, which, if he had nothing else to do, years of study would not enable him to master? How is he even to set about it? Does he start with book No. 1, hoping in years perhaps to have got through a few hundred? Well, the thing is not quite so hopeless as it looks at first glance. It is certain that to read the whole two thousand books we have referred to is a physical impossibility, and also that if one only reads a small proportion, and a very thin proportion is all that one can read -facts very essential to the right understanding of the subject may escape you. Well, you only read a very tiny proportion of the very excellent and interesting encyclopaedic dictionary that you have upon your shelves. Yet you attach great value to its completeness, and it would be all but useless to you if those hundreds of pages which you are never likely to read were not included. Anyone who attempted so to read it through would find, like the Scotchman that, though interesting, it was disconnected in its argument. You get your encyclopaedic dictionary only when you know what it is you want to know; have a definite question that needs answer, a definite problem to solve, as when, a man having sued you for libel because you have applied a certain word to him, you desire to know what the authorities have to say concerning its meaning. With such a stimulus to research it is astonishing how rapidly you will extract from a thousand pages just the twenty lines of information that you need. HOW TO TACKLE A SUBJECT Now although no real book sho be treated quite like a dicti |