Mr. Hill tells of his first presentation to the Emperor. He found him waiting in the palace garden, clad in white with a silver helmet on his head, looking like Lohengrin, and records his personal charm, but found "a mind distorted, led into captivity and condemned to crime by the obsession that God has but one people and they are his people; that the people have but one will and that is his will; that God has but one purpose and that is his purpose; and, being responsible only to the God of his imagination, a purely tribal divinity, the reflection of his own power-loving nature, that he has no definite responsibility to men." He shows that, he being subject to this obsession, no restraints were possible upon the Kaiser and no promises binding. Under pretense of danger to the fatherland he increased armament by sea and land, when the only danger to the peace of Europe rose from the trespasses and machinations of Germany and its dependent ally, Austria-Hungary.

He examines the claim of divine appointment made by the Kaiser, and shows the vassalage, negotiations and vicissitudes through which the Hohenzollerns advanced to the throne. He shows that no moral principle but success alone was the Kaiser's test of divine intention, "and so the Hohenzollern prerogatives, which obtain but little comfort from science, seek their safe asylum in the mysteries of religion."

He says:

In no country of Europe has the feudal system continued to affect the social organization to the extent it has in Germany. When the French were proclaiming the "Rights of Man" as axioms of the human mind, German princes were selling their subjects as foreign mercenaries in the same spirit as they would enter upon a transaction for the shipment of cattle; and there was no suggestion of revolt.

He shows that German philosophy, from Hegel down, has represented the State as a superior entity for whose aggrandizement the individual exists; that all society is modeled on the army, "a system of super-imposed classes," every one tenacious of his title, petty or otherwise; that under this system the higher may with impunity neglect or abuse the lower, but that any inattention to a superior is held to deserve punishment. There was no craving for individual liberty in the English or American sense, and "freedom meant only exemption from want and misery." "That the Kaiser in his personal addresses never refers to the prescriptions of international law or to principles of any kind, but speaks on great questions like a primitive

oriental despot. "Sic volo, sic jubeo" seemed his motto, but a decision once made he regarded thereafter as the act of God.

He points out that in the negotiations between Germany with England, through Lord Haldane, in 1912, the former proposed absolute neutrality for each country in case the other was at war with a third; but the purpose of this was not peace, but aggressive war, the very war that has followed, with England with her hands tied. Fortunately the negotiations were not successful. Bernhardi wrote that if England consented to the expansion of Germany and Austria as both European and colonial Powers and in military and naval equipment, "European peace would be assured and a powerful counterpoise would be created to the growing influence of the United States." Perhaps to cover these machinations, Fried published his book "The German Emperor and the World Peace," in which the Kaiser was posed as the most pacific of rulers.

Dr. Hill says that the Kaiser offers no defense of his procedure in bringing on the most bloody and destructive war of all history, except to complain that Great Britain complicated his plans by not observing the neutrality he had desired, but which England had not pledged herself to, and which would have meant the destruction of her allies as a preliminary to her own humiliation. When on July 26, 1914, Sir Edward Grey, alarmed at the prospect of a war engulfing all Europe, proposed a conference to prevent it, the German Government refused to "fall in with" the suggestion and deemed it "not practicable." To cause England to desist in her rôle of peace-maker, on the 29th the German Ambassador informed Sir Edward that the German Chancellor would mediate between Vienna and St. Petersburg, and the Kaiser promised his good offices to the Czar. The Kaiser, in his message to President Wilson, represents that on the morning of July 31st, while preparing a note to the Czar to inform him that Vienna, London and Berlin were agreed, he was interrupted by a telephone message from his Chancellor saying that on the night before the Czar had ordered the whole Russian army mobilized. Mr. Hill shows that this information was actually received not in the morning, but the evening of July 31st, and the Russian mobilization was not ordered until the afternoon of that day. So that on the evening of the 31st, when the Kaiser had a modified consent from Vienna to comply with Sir Edward's suggestion and from the Czar suggesting arbitration at The Hague, an alternative was telegraphed St. Petersburg that if Russia

did not stop all war measures within twelve hours, German mobilization would follow. The threat was of mobilization, not war, but the German Ambassador at St. Petersburg was instructed, if no satisfactory reply were received, to declare war at five P. M., August 1, and at 7.10 P. M. that day it was declared. Speaking, June 8, 1918, on the thirtieth anniversary of his accession, the Kaiser said that while his people did not know at first what the war meant, that he knew very well that it was a world struggle between the Prussian-German-Germanic world conception and the Anglo-Saxon conception.

Dr. Hill finds the outcome was but "the morally inevitable culmination of the ambitions, the fantasies and the impetuosity of Kaiser William II, unrestrained by a responsible government."

"He promised them gain and glory. He has covered them with sackcloth and ashes," says Dr. Hill. He finds the claim of "Encirclement" made by Germany wholly unreal, either in a military or a commercial sense, German ships on every sea, their goods in every market and Great Britain their best customer. He finds the secret of the Kaiser's course merely in a dynastic ambition that all Germans should continue his taxpayers, his soldiers, his subjects. "Therefore, other peoples must be annexed to the German Empire in order that Germans may remain German subjects."

That the whole was merely a predatory adventure, in the spoils of which only a few participated; that the people as a whole do not profit by it; that the Kaiser did not will this war, but a swift, short victorious war which should secure large indemnities, add coveted territories and make Germany master on the continent, preparatory to another like war for supremacy at sea; that Germany fought what she called a defensive war "on the soil of ten other nations."

Dr. Hill sustains his conclusions by full and exact references to official documents and the most accepted of German writers. He adds at the close some thirty-five pages of illustrative documents, and an index of six pages closes the book.

This writer has found these Impressions intensely interesting, an impressive and convincing work, informed by earnest feeling and shaped by not only the most careful scholarship, but by the author's personal acquaintance with Germany and her leaders.

Any reader must hope that by some happy circumstance the country may be able to avail itself of Dr. Hill's erudition, experience, justice and sound common sense in the settlement of its international re

lations now so vastly complicated and important. His equipment for such a task is obvious and preeminent and his vigor and zeal unabated. There is no more serious impeachment of party government than that it excludes such a citizen from the service of his country, in a time of need, in helping to solve questions as to which he is perhaps the best · informed American.

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY.

The Economic Causes of War. By Achille Loria, of the University of Turin. Translated by John Leslie Garner. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company. 1918. pp. 188.

This work is a multum in parvo of historical erudition and economic insight. Its eminent author has put into one hundred and eighty-two pages a philosophy of war and peace based on history and the overwhelming object lesson of the present war. As he tells us, the occasions for international quarrels multiply with the relations which civilization creates and, as a part of this evolution, international law develops, treaties multiply and the incentives for disregarding both law and treaties increase in like proportion till wars result. All this is largely under the pressure of economic motives. Foreign trade has been one dominant factor from primitive times to the present day. It is both a source of wealth and a breeder of wars. Professor Loria distinguishes sources of wealth as "physiological" and "pathological" the former being in evidence where wealth is acquired by production and the latter where it is gained by some form of "grab," simple or complex. As population grows, the seizure of land becomes a prominent means of acquiring-and losing-wealth, though, as the author thinks, it may have been a less prominent one in actual history than it has been made to be in traditional assumptions. Opportunity for traffic has more often figured as the bone of contention.

Professor Loria shows by examples that while international laws increase with material civilization, the motives for disregarding them grow also, and there is a perpetual struggle between that which restrains from war and that which provokes it, and that wars are, ever and anon, occurring as the latter influences become the stronger. Commerce and the resulting motives for war, necessity for law, violations of law, warfare-such is the series perpetually illustrated in the history of any long period.

Science doubtless gains by reason of the fact that advocates of an important principle often run to over-statement, especially during

the period when the principle is making its way toward general recognition, and the value of the present little work is not lessened by such statements as the following:

The Crusaders' sole motive was the increase of revenues of feudal lords at the expense of the revenues of Syrian and oriental lords;

The change in military art which took place in the early modern period was caused by the decline of the power of the feudal element as compared with that of the bourgeoisie;

Holland's struggle for independence against Spain was in reality simply a privateering war on the Spanish merchant marine and the Hispano-American colonial trade. The war of England against Napoleon was merely a reaction against the Napoleonic conquests which threatened Britain's commerce;

The Chinese war was undertaken to impede the progress of the United States. The Spanish war was merely the result of the decline in the profits of the American sugar manufacturers. The war in the Transvaal was the work of financiers and speculators in gold mines, who expected to reap great profits from a military adventure in South Africa, etc.1

In general, the work gives too much color to the belief that in modern times wars are frequently, if not generally, brought about by financial interests and, rather than otherwise, against the will of governments and peoples.

A passage in the work throws light on the basis of the so-called. "Balance of Power"-a subject which in current discussion is seldom treated with much intelligence. Even in the small compass of this volume there is enough to show that the comparative fighting strength of different nations or groups of nations is necessarily an element affecting the probability of maintaining peace. Among the merits of the work is to be counted its treatment of the relation between labor movements and warfare and its discussion both of the analogy and the marked difference between arbitration of labor disputes and arbitration of international quarrels. Labor movements, which play so conspicuous a part in all modern life, have much to do with international relations, and a democracy which connects itself in spirit and in practice with labor movements is, in the main, a discourager of warfare. These principles are presented clearly and have as much illustration as the size of the work permits.

JOHN BATES CLARK.

1 Page 60 et seq.

The italics are mine.