governments, with a view to marshalling the most striking evidence favoring the belligerent whose cause the author believes to be just. Such a book, if well written, is pretty sure to find a numerous and admiring audience on one side or the other; but it has, of course, little value except as a campaign document. This is emphatically not the sort of book Professor Stowell has written. On the contrary, he has faithfully, intelligently and fairly analyzed the entire published diplomatic correspondence, with a view to finding out exactly what it shows with respect to the origin of the war, and presenting his results in a way to be readily intelligible to the average reader.

The correspondence does not deal altogether for either side, and Professor Stowell has not failed to point this out. The documents are not altogether clear on a number of points, and Professor Stowell has frankly said so, and at every step he has referred to and quoted the passages upon which he bases his statements, and has rendered it not only possible but easy for the reader to form his own conclusions. Moreover, he has not confined his references to the documents themselves, but has also made appropriate reference, upon important points, to the many official and unofficial commentaries on the documents, thus giving the reader the opportunity to compare the opinions of other writers with. his own.

The volume is divided into three parts and an appendix. The first part is taken up with a brief but clear and readable outline of the diplomatic history of Europe since the Congress of Vienna and a sketch of the general diplomatic situation at the time of the assassination at Serajevo. Part two, the body of the work, is devoted to a detailed analysis of the diplomatic correspondence immediately preceding the war as published by the various governments. Part three, reproduces the text of many of the important documents referred to, aside from the diplomatic correspondence itself which the author has forborne to reprint on the ground that these documents have been made accessible in so many ways as to render their reproduction unnecessary.

The work, although invaluable to the specialist who is making a study of the documentary history of the diplomacy of the war, is intended for the general reader, and in order to make it more useful to him, a chapter of questions and answers is included in part three, in which a number of the questions in regard to the war, which have been most mooted, have been specifically asked and answered. The nature of these questions may be gathered from the following examples:

Did France violate or intend to violate Belgium's neutrality? Was the German Emperor personally responsible for the war? Did Russia mobilize in such a fashion as to necessitate action by Germany? etc.

A convenient mechanical feature of the work is the use of "modified quotations" in quoting from the various documents; a method which, while retaining the substance and for all practical purposes the language of the original, allows the quotation to be easily worked into the general framework of the text.

A most interesting and valuable chapter sums up the author's conclusions as to the causes of the war. In a word, he finds that the countries responsible for the outbreak of the war were, "first, Austria; second, Germany, and in some slight degree Russia," (p. 491) and since it would not be unjust "to lay at the door of Germany the causes of whatever action was taken on the part of Russia and Austria to bring on the war,' the author reaches the conclusion that "Germany stands primarily responsible for the outbreak of the war" (p. 492).

It is, of course, impossible, within the limits of this review, to enter into any detailed discussion of these conclusions, with which the reviewer is generally in accord. It is suggested, however, that perhaps Professor Stowell does not sufficiently stress (p. 481) the duty which it is submitted lay upon Serbia, to have promptly instituted an energetic and bona fide investigation of the assassinations at Serajevo. And again it is submitted that possibly not sufficient weight is given to the German argument of Russian culpability growing out of the premature Russian mobilization. This argument has been very strongly put by Dr. Helfferich and if we apply what is sometimes called in our municipal law "the doctrine of the last chance," in determining the proximate cause of the war, Dr. Helfferich's argument has considerable force.

Up to the time of the Russian general mobilization, as it seems to the reviewer, Germany and Austria were wrong at every point. On the face of the correspondence, the Russian general mobilization appears to have been premature and to have been entered upon with full knowledge that Germany, acting on the doctrine that Russia had the numbers and Germany had the speed, would regard Russian mobilization as the signal for immediate general mobilization and war. The reviewer cannot but feel that Russia, of all the Entente Powers, while not the aggressor, signally failed, to use another expression from our municipal law, "to retreat to the wall" before resorting to arms.

It is unlikely that any two persons would be in exact agreement as to the emphasis which should be placed on each of the many acts contributing to bring about the great tragedy. But Professor Stowell takes the utmost pains on this point of Russian mobilization, as on all other points, to place the reader in possession of not only the exact facts but of the various arguments which have been made on the facts. Dr. Helfferich's able argument, for instance, is fully stated (p. 165, note) and Professor Stowell is careful not to fall into the common error to which both the French Yellow Book and English White Paper lend support, that Austrian general mobilization preceded Russian general mobilization. See pages 165, 183, 185, 186, 192, 491, 492, 522, etc.

Professor Stowell guards his conclusions that Germany was primarily responsibile for the outbreak of the war with the following very judicious qualification:

I do not wish to be misunderstood as thinking that Germany really wished for war; but by her conduct she gave evidence that she intended to back up her ally to secure a diplomatic triumph and the subjugation of her neighbor, which would greatly have strengthened Teutonic influence in the Balkans. She risked the peace of Europe in a campaign after prestige (p. 485).

* *

Passing the point of Germany's primary responsibility, Professor Stowell seeks to investigate the question as to "who decided upon the various steps which determined her action" (p. 492). He finds, it would seem rightly, that "the search for any personal responsibility for the war will prove unavailing," (p. 492) and concludes that "the real cause of the action of the German Government was a result of the state of mind of the nation," the Bismarckian building up of a "Realpolitik-that is to say, a policy of dealing with concrete conditions as they are, as opposed to the following of ideals; but in the minds of many it means the justification of whatever succeeds" (p. 494).

Germany and the German race needed and demanded their "place in the sun." Germany declined the expedient of emigration for her people to other countries or the voluntary restriction of her population, in other words, race suicide (p. 506). In the language of the author:

She preferred the third solution, which was to make an appeal to her teeming millions to hack their way to a larger place in the world. She was not deterred by the fact that she must rend the prize from the grasp of another state, whose philosophy of race-suicide she considered merited such a fate.

Having decided for this fuller life, even at the cost of the world-condemnation which would follow her aggressive attempts to seize the territory of others, she attempted

to secure the results through threats of force without its actual employment. She played for a diplomatic victory over Servia and so on beyond the Balkans into Asia Minor.

If England and France could have been sure that once Germany had expanded over these regions she would subscribe to their own philosophy of the status quo and not take advantage of this increase in strength to make it a fulcrum for a further advance, they could, doubtless, have reached some agreement with her, but each side mistrusting the other's purpose, it was most difficult to reach any compromise. Germany, impatient and apprehensive of delay, said, "I will expand, even at the cost of aggression. If need be I will seek my 'place in the sun' at the point of the sword." To this the Anglo-French super-empire, defending the status quo, replied, "Thou shalt not expand until thou puttest aggression behind thee." The issue is being fought out.

The question may be fairly asked whether or not such a serious and elaborate study of the diplomacy of the war as was involved in Professor Stowell's work was worth while at the time when it was undertaken, when, as everyone admits, the documents which have been published by the various governments are by no means complete and so much remains to be learned from the secret archives and personal memoirs, etc. As to the real facts of the negotiations, it seems to the reviewer that this question should be emphatically answered in the affirmative. This is the greatest war in history; if it is worth while to discuss at this time the diplomatic correspondence gotten out by the various governments at all (and even those who in theory appear to maintain that it is not are compelled to discuss them, if only in order to show their alleged worthlessness), it is worth while to discuss them in a careful and scientific spirit. It is true that the documents at present are only partially available, but no one can tell how many years it will be before this situation will be remedied. As Professor Stowell points out in his preface, "it was years after the Franco-Prussian War before the world learned the truth in regard to Bismarck's diplomacy during the formative period of the German Empire." And, moreover, it is upon the facts: as they appear, not as they really are, that individual and governmental action must now be taken. Neither men nor nations can wait for the posthumous journals of statesmen and the doctor's thesis of the illimitable future to find out what their attitude should be during the greatest conflict of history, in the midst of which they are living and must act. Professor Stowell has rendered every serious student of the causes of the war his debtor.

WILLIAM CULLEN DENNIS.

Wheaton's Elements of International Law. 5th English Ed., revised, enlarged, and re-written by Coleman Phillipson, London, Stevens and Sons: New York, Baker, Voorhis and Company, 1916, pp. xliv, 901.

Dr. Phillipson has made numerous contributions to international law, one of the best known being International Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome. This new edition of Wheaton is another recognition of the great service which Wheaton rendered international law in his first edition eighty years ago.

This new edition contains an introduction by Sir Frederick Pollock in which, writing in the Christmas vacation of 1915, he allows himself to say that it is the fixed belief of the German leaders that, "Germany has rights in virtue of a paramount mission to Prussianize the world. Germany's allies have rights because they are her allies. Neutrals have just what Germany chooses to allow them, and enemies have none." Later, however, he adds, "But on reflection it seems that, when great Powers commit themselves to principles of anarchic tyranny, that is the very reason why those who still believe in the rule of law should reassert and republish their faith as the most dignified form of protest, and in the long run not the least effectual" (p. xl.).

The plan of this fifth edition follows for the most part the arrangement of earlier editions of Wheaton. No indication is given as to what are the actual words of Wheaton and what are the words of Dr. Phillipson. Perhaps, however, clearness would have been gained in certain fundamental concepts by following Wheaton's words, as in Chapter II, Part I when Wheaton says, "The subjects of international law are separate political societies of men living independently of each other, and especially those called Sovereign States." Instead Dr. Phillipson says, "The peculiar subjects of international law are nations, and those political societies of men called states." (p. 32.) Later in the same chapter, after discussing "nation" and "state," Dr. Phillipson says, "But the peculiar objects of international law are those direct relations which exist between nations and states; that is, the subjects of international law are, properly speaking, only states,-for they alone are vested with international personality." (p. 34.) In the statement and discussion of what has come to be called the Monroe Doctrine, the reader would be enlightened if it had been made clear that the paragraph preceding the discussion was Wheaton's own opinion upon a pronouncement by one of his contemporaries (p. 97).