Books and Orange Books and Yellow Books without end, and proving this or
that from them--as of course out of such a mass of material they can
easily do, according to their fancy. But when one remembers that almost
all the documents in these books have been written with a _view_ to
their later publication; and when one remembers also that, however
incompetent diplomatists as a class may be, no one supposes them to be
such fools as to entrust their _most_ important _ententes_ and
understandings with each other to printed records--why, one comes to the
conclusion that the analysis of all these State papers is not a very
profitable occupation.




II


WAR-MADNESS

_September_, 1914.

How mad, how hopelessly mad, it all seems I With fifteen to twenty
million soldiers already mobilized, and more than half that number in
the fighting lines; with engines of appalling destruction by land and
sea, and over the land and under the sea; with Northern France, Belgium,
and parts of Germany, Poland, Russia, Servia, and Austria drenched in
blood; the nations exhausting their human and material resources in
savage conflict--this war, marking the climax, and (let us hope) the
_finale_ of our commercial civilization, is the most monstrous the old
Earth has ever seen. And yet, as in a hundred earlier and lesser wars,