on particular points can be checked by the Foreign Secretary's refusal to disclose information as "not in the public interest.” Effective control may be exerted because the House of Commons need not vote money unless there is general approval of administration; but this control in actual practice is more apparent than real, since administrative acts in other departments are fairly well known, while the activities of the foreign service are obscured. The supplies must be voted and the character of the administration taken on faith.

Mr. Ponsonby is one of the few writers who are constructive as well as critical; his programme is fully outlined. He would have the Foreign Office Vote discussed annually as a matter of regular procedure and for two days, with a complete statement from the Foreign Secretary; every treaty and commitment-its specific clauses as well as general content-would have to be ratified by Parliament, whose consent would be necessary for a declaration of war; the people would be taken into the confidence of the Foreign Secretary through periodical pronouncements on foreign affairs, especially when Parliament was not sitting. To make easier the exertion of legislative control he suggests the appointment of a Foreign Affairs Committee in the Commons. The same programme, with perhaps greater stress laid upon the committee feature and upon the necessity for recruiting the foreign office service in a more democratic way, is urged by Mr. Philip Snowden (also a member of Parliament) in his paper on "Democracy and Publicity in Foreign Affairs," which is a very able statement of the case against secrecy.

Several writers of the works under review are identified with the Union of Democratic Control, an organization formed a few months after the outbreak of the war for the laudable purpose of securing to "ourselves and the generations that succeed us, a new course of policy which will prevent a similar catastrophe tot his present war ever again befalling our Empire." One of the four cardinal points insisted upon by the programme of the Union is that no treaty or engagement shall be entered into without the consent of Parliament and that machinery shall be created for ensuring democratic control of foreign policy. The Union has been bitterly criticised on account of pro-German leanings, the

pro-Germanism being-as evinced by the writings of the Hon. Secretary, Mr. E. D. Morel, and other pamphleteers—the maintenance of the thesis that the Central Powers were by no means wholly responsible for the present conflict, and that England's foreign policy contributed to the debacle.

Mr. Morel's book is a reprint, with a few minor changes, of the one entitled Morocco in Diplomacy and publised in 1912. The single addendum of any importance is a preface to the third (present) edition dealing with two collections of the war's diplomatic documents. The French Yellow Book, Mr. Morel thinks, completely demonstrates the part played by Morocco in bringing on hostilities, and "justifies to the hilt" all that he has written. Even more important, however, is the correspondence of the Belgian diplomatic representatives resident at Berlin, Paris, and London, relative to the Anglo-French policy towards Germany. The documents-119 in number and covering the period of 1905-1914-were discovered in the Belgian archives and were published by the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung in July and August, 1915. Their content has been discussed by the American press, chiefly, however, in relation to the question as to whether, by these intrigues and discussions of possible danger from, and defence against, Germany, the neutralization of Belgium was impaired. To Mr. Morel's mind, the correspondence of the French Yellow Book invokes a mass of corroborative testimony more conclusive than that received by any other writer on international affairs during his own lifetime. And, in the face of the documents discovered in the official Belgian archives, "the charge that Germany cynically planned the war and let Help loose upon Europe is no longer tenable by anyone who retains a sense of judgment. The blame has not been hers alone. Ten years of secret diplomacy have done their work."

The detailed argument is not germane to the question of the popular control of foreign policy. It is possible, however, to read this story of British, French, Spanish, and German interests in Morocco, of the Act of Algeciras, its violation, and the German intervention (first in 1905 and then with the Panther at Agadir in 1911), and the resulting Anglo-French solidarity without finding the slightest excuse for Germany's attitude in

July and August, 1914. So for as secret diplomacy is concerned, England's readiness to support the French case in Morocco was made clearly evident by Lloyd George's speech of July 21, 1911; and certainly, if for two years after the first publication of Mr. Morel's book, Englishmen who thought as he did, with the complete story told, with the nature of the Anglo-French entente evidenced by its solidarity in an acute crisis (after the Panther incident) could not induce a foreign policy less definitely adapted to the isolation of Germany, then secret diplomacy is not wholly to blame in the particular instance of Morocco. Mr. Morel made nations heed what he had to say about the Congo, but here his case is not so good. Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy is an able but unconvincing polemic.

Not so scholarly or able, but of a similar tenor, is Mr. Hayward's What is Diplomacy? The secret intercourse among nations, he asserts, embodies a code of morality which would not be tolerated by savages, moral cowardice, and license for high political personages "to commit acts the meanness of which would make any gentleman kick them out of his back door." This case against diplomacy as an "iniquitous contraption" he would justify by a review of the correspondence immediately preceding the present war, but he soon drifts into an unconvincing argument that British policy, rather than the system itself, was largely responsible. Like other writers of the same turn of mind— notably Mr. Francis Neilson-he makes a very great deal of the fact that England had had naval "conversations" with France, and is unable to reconcile Viscount Grey's statement in 1912 that there was no agreement to coöperate in war, with the ready assurance on August 2, 1914, that the British fleet would protect the French coast against German aggression. This promise he interprets as showing England's eagerness to fight Germany, and overlooks entirely the fact that it was necessary for England's own safety; that, while the immediate impetus of her entrance was the violation of Belgian territory, no one now doubts that vital interests and the temper of the nation, completely opposed to the German international code, would have drawn England in on the side of France. As the London Times said, seven months after the war began, "There are still, it seems, some Englishmen

and Englishwomen who greatly err as to the reasons that have forced England to draw the sword. . . They do not reflect that our honour and our interest must have compelled us to join. France and Russia even if Germany had scrupulously respected the rights of her small neighbors." And the Times went on to declare bluntly that "we keep our word when we have given it, but we do not give it without solid practical reasons and we do not set up to be international Don Quixotes, ready at all times to redress wrongs which do us no hurt."

Apart from this attack on England's attitude, and the citation of Bismarck's coup in changing the famous Ems telegram, Mr. Hayward relies on Mr. Morel's facts concerning Morocco and quotes liberally from the latter's book. To show the perverted morality of diplomacy and its false ideals, Mr. Hayward adduces as "authorities" works on the German spy system, among them a volume well known in the United States-Dr. Armgaard Carl Graves's The German Spy System. Mr. Hayward would apply to diplomacy "a moderate-but rigid-morality"; "national morality and honour" must be rescued from "irredeemable damage through the insidious growth of the destroying fungus of this foul disease" of secret diplomacy. Then the problem of preserving peace will have been solved. The style of the book is forcible but unpleasant and will not commend itself to American readers.

How Diplomats Make War was first published anonymously, but later with its paternity unconcealed when Mr. Neilson resigned his seat in the House of Commons. It contains a much broader indictment of the "licensed camorra" of the Foreign Office than Mr. Morel's work on Morocco. The author shows a very wide historical grasp and his survey of European diplomacy from 1815 to the present time is decidedly able. He does more than consider the evils of secret engagements; he goes at length into the motives and nature of European alliances, examines the colored papers containing the correspondence of the twelve days preceding the war, and attempts to fix the responsibility for the beginning of the conflict and the entrance of England.

The book has many phases and suggests many points well worth detailed discussion. For example, Mr. Neilson argues

that the Treaty of 1839 guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium did not impose any obligation on England. The reasoning is curious. The ancillary treaties concluded in 1870 by England for the observance of the Treaty by France and Prussia, modified the original engagement without the consent of two signatories, Russia and Austria. The treaty was thus voided and England was relieved of any responsibility when Germany invaded Belgium. In comment on this argument, it will be sufficient, although of course not conclusive, to say, without laboring the points of international law involved, that were Mr. Neilson's interpretation correct, it would certainly have been seized upon by Germany in her efforts to woo neutral opinion. Yet, although there have been two or three mentions of the point, it has remained for a member of the English Parliament to raise it to the dignity of being considered between bound covers.

Mr. Neilson is bitter against Viscount Grey, whom he accuses not only of incompetence, but of bad faith. He attributes England's entrance into the war to "secret diplomacy, conversations of military and naval experts, and the plans of General Staffs." He pictures Germany as for the most part pacifically inclined, as uninfluenced by the militarist propaganda; he stresses Russian insistence on mobilization, and marshals and sometimes twists evidence to show that the entrance of England was the greatest triumph for French diplomacy since Talleyrand; he criticises the failure of Viscount Grey to be more frank and to confess the intentions of England, and he maintains that Belgium was a mere subterfuge. But he nowhere considers the indisputable fact that the Austrian ultimatum led to the war and that the aggression against Servia would have been checked at a word. from Germany.

And now, after this lengthy but necessarily incomplete description of the more important literature on the subject, only a few brief general comments may be ventured. Viscount Bryce wrote in his work on The American Commonwealth that "the day may come when in England the question of limiting the at present all but unlimited discretion of the Executive in Foreign Affairs will have to be dealt with." The day has arrived, and the problem must be settled in the reconstruction following the