the declaration of war by the United States upon Austria and in view of the invasion of Italian territory by the armies of the Central Powers. NELSON GAMMANS.

The Immediate Causes of the Great War. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co. net.

By Oliver Perry Chitwood. 1917. pp. xii, 196. $1.35

Though the literature concerning the causes of the Great War is, as is generally understood, rather overabundant, so much so that when one picks up a new volume on this subject, one does it with a certain sense of doubt and a small amount at least of suspicion, doubt as to its adding anything new and suspicion as to its bias, yet there is undoubtedly a place for such a brief summary as Professor Chitwood suggests for the sake of the college student who has not the time to devote to the study of the more extended statements. It is to meet this need that this book strives to be different from its predecessors, and it is by no means unsuccessful in the rôle of a well-condensed manual of the immediate causes of the war.

It rests entirely for its principal story upon the official documents from the governments involved in the war; it is, in fact, as the publisher characterizes it, "a digest of the published correspondence of the Powers." Only the first chapter, "Some Indirect Causes," in which Mr. Chitwood summarily reviews the last forty years of diplomacy, is based upon secondary material, mainly the larger works on this same topic and those on recent European history. Selections must necessarily be made when a writer uses such a great mass of documents, and this selecting has apparently been done in a spirit of fairness consistent with the high standard of historical accuracy shown throughout, and the emphasis placed upon facts, and facts only, without partisan interpretations.

There are three chapters on the Serbian phase, followed by two on the Efforts to Prevent War and on Efforts to Isolate the War, which with the one following on the Broadening of the War Area to include Russia are quite successful, on the whole, in giving the essential facts clearly. Equally so are those on Great Britain's Entry into the War, on Belgian Neutrality and, in general, those on Turkey and Japan, on Italy and on the Lesser Belligerents (Bulgaria, Portugal, Roumania). The United States is not mentioned.

Mr. Chitwood is less happy in his conclusions. The reviewer is inclined to take exception to the idea that this war began in a game of bluff; the evidence, even as presented by Mr. Chitwood, does not bear out this conclusion. Instead, it is quite possible to believe that this much, at least, was the deliberate purpose of Germany; the move to reduce Serbia from the ranks of independent states and to make the Teutonic Empire of the Near East approach reality. The incapacity shown by the diplomats may not have been stupidity at all, but a lack of knowledge by one side of the plans being matured by the other. The representatives of France, Russia, and England were quite in the dark as to the Austro-German purposes and were artfully kept so.

It is not safe to emphasize overmuch the official expression of what may be only one side perhaps the better side, perhaps not, of a nation's mind. We may strive also to divide the diseases of the European body-politic into chronic and acute, but should we discuss too exclusively the acute alone, we may not give due attention to the chronic ailments suddenly coming to a head. A book, therefore, upon the immediate causes of the World War may easily dwarf unduly the great underlying causes which reached a focus in 1914. This effect, Professor Chitwood's first chapter does not sufficiently counteract. The index is small, yet serviceable, but maps are conspicuously lacking.

A. I. A.

The Deportation of Women and Girls from Lille. New York: George H. Doran & Company. 1917. pp. 81.

This is a collection of documents in English translation relating to the deportation of women and girls from Lille, Roubaix, and Tourcoing, by the Germans during the spring of 1916. The collection embraces the note of protest addressed by M. Briand to the Powers on July 25, 1916, together with various documents, French and German, including notices and placards posted by the German military authorities, protests of the mayor and bishop of Lille, letters written by some of the victims, and a large number of depositions made before local magistrates. It contains the evidence of a cruel and brutal measure without precedent in modern civilized warfare: the sudden arrest and tearing away from their homes of some 25,000 inhabitants of an invaded district, young girls, women, and men up to the age of fifty-five years,

without regard to their social position; and the carrying of them away to distant parts unknown to their families for compulsory labor under military supervision and at such tasks and at such wages as their captors saw fit to prescribe.

The account of the procedure of arrest and deportation reads very much like the description of a slave raid on the Gold Coast in the seventeenth century. Families were broken up: young girls were huddled into dirty cars with men of debased characters; in the regions to which they were taken women were compelled to do laundry work for German soldiers and to act as body servants for German officers; men were forced to take part in military operations against their own troops, and men and women alike were forcibly employed as screens to shield German columns from attack by French troops. The excuse alleged by the German authorities was the benevolent desire to find employment for the population of the three cities mentioned, but the real reason was to find laborers to harvest the crops in northern France for the feeding of the occupying armies. One may search in vain the Hague Conventions for a syllable of authority to justify the wholesale kidnapping, deportation, and enslavement of the peaceful civilians of an occupied district. As stated above, such a measure is without precedent in modern wars and no respectable authority can or ever will be found to defend it. The voice of the civilized world was raised in protest, but it made no impression on the gallant knights of German Kultur, and a few months later they proceeded to carry out on a much larger scale the same brutal policy in Belgium.

J. W. GARNER.

The

Recueil de Rapports sur les différents points du Programme-Minimum de l'Organisation centrale pour une Paix durable. Vol. III. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1917. pp. 383.

This third volume of reports partakes of the international character of its predecessors. Its ten essays are written, in French, German, or English, by two Swedes, two Austrians, two Hollanders, one Swiss, and three Americans.

The problem of nationality is discussed by Dr. Karl Hildebrand, of Sweden, and Dr. Rudolf Laun, of Austria, both of whom reject as

1 Cf. this JOURNAL, Vol. XI, No. 1 (January, 1917), for a notice of Volumes I and II.

Utopian the plan of making states coterminous with nationalities, but admit that there should be within each state civil equality, religious liberty, and the free use of native languages, at least in so far as the private, as opposed to the public and especially the official, use of language is concerned. Dr. Hildebrand believes that each question of nationality should be studied and answered separately, in accordance with actual facts, and that these questions can best be answered by each nation after the war, and not in the treaty of peace. Dr. Laun refers to the eight nationalities which contribute to the population of Austria, no one of them being in the majority, and argues that as Austria is "the cradle of protection to national minorities" (die Wiege des nationalen Minoritätenschutzes) it should become the model of "the law of nationalities" (Nationalitätenrecht).

Dr. Van Houten, of Holland, writing on the development of the Hague Conference as "The Way Out," outlines and advocates a "Council of States for International Affairs" to represent the Conference when not in session, and to act as a council for conciliating disputes and for administering such tasks as those connected with the freedom of the sea, a sea-police, contraband, etc.

Dr. Lammasch, of Austria, contributes a careful critique of the Dutch committee's plan of an international organization for the pacific settlement of disputes. In the course of this, he supports the development of a genuine international court and commissions of inquiry and conciliation, but rejects (as does the Dutch committee also) the economic boycott and military force as sanctions of international institutions.

Writing under the caption of "An International Police," Baron Palmstierna, of Sweden, rejects the economic boycott as an insufficient sanction of international law and also a genuine international police force as impracticable, at the same time rather doubtfully advocating the pooling of all national armaments for this purpose.

Our own Mr. Taft advocates without any doubt or hesitation the use of both the economic boycott and an alliance of national armaments for the preservation of the peace, and answers in familiar form a halfdozen objections to such a sanction.

A reduction and limitation of armaments on land and sea, at the end of this war, is demanded by Hon. W. H. de Beaufort, of Holland, who regards this step as necessarily pari passu with the development of a satisfactory court of arbitration. Dr. Broda, of Switzerland,

coincides with this opinion, and discusses in much more detail than is usual some concrete plans for the limitation of land, water, and aërial armaments.

Mrs. Fannie Fern Andrews, of Boston, sketches the history of the American attempt to secure the exemption of noncontraband private property from capture in warfare on the sea, and quotes a number of American publicists, most of whom are opposed at present to this "American" proposal. She also states some of the current problems associated with contraband, blockade, the conversion of merchant ships, enemy merchant ships, war zones, mines, and submarines.

The last and the longest essay is contributed by Mr. Denys P. Myers, also of Boston, who writes on "The Control of Foreign Relations." This is an instructive historical account of the development of democratic control over foreign relations in various states of the Old World and the New, and shows the real progress that has been achieved in the past, while enabling the reflective reader to realize how much needs to be accomplished along this line, as along so many others, before the world is truly safe for democracy.

The volume as a whole, though by no means definitive, of course, on any of its topics, is well worth while, and the society under whose auspices it is published is to be congratulated on its persistent and intelligent efforts to internationalize the world's public opinion on the most pressing international problems of our time.

Wм. I. HULL.