Excerpt from Diplomatic Documents Relating to the Outbreak of the European War, Vol. 1 The Bible tells us that of making many books there is no end, and it would seem that the writers on the great war of 1914 are intent upon establishing beyond peradventure the truth of this pronouncement, if anyone should be bold enough to question it. In deed, we are in danger of being engulfed by the multitude of books concerning its causes with which the world is flooded, many of which, it is believed, unlike the ark, will not ...
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Excerpt from Diplomatic Documents Relating to the Outbreak of the European War, Vol. 1 The Bible tells us that of making many books there is no end, and it would seem that the writers on the great war of 1914 are intent upon establishing beyond peradventure the truth of this pronouncement, if anyone should be bold enough to question it. In deed, we are in danger of being engulfed by the multitude of books concerning its causes with which the world is flooded, many of which, it is believed, unlike the ark, will not survive the deluge; but notwithstanding the many, there is one book of an authoritative na ture whose chapters are the Official statements laid before the world by each of the belligerent governments, and the present volume justi fies its appearance and its claim to usefulness because it is composed exclusively of the appeals which each of the nations at war has made to public opinion. It is true that these many-colored books and papers have been more than once brought together and published, but there appears to have been in each case a special reason or an interested motive for so doing. The present publication has no purpose other than to lay be fore the reader the statements which the nations have been pleased to make as to the reasons which drove them to war (because apparently none of them wanted the war and yet each of them was forced into it), without an attempt to analyze the reasons given by the govern ments of the warring countries; to separate them into pretext or cause; to question their sincerity or to apportion praise or blame. The documents speak for themselves and the reader is left to judge. Now, the value of these documents is greater than the truth which they may contain, for they are the reasons which each nation would have us regard as the justification of its action, and from this stand point they are a contribution to the psychology of nations. Responsi ble statesmen thought that the publication of the documents would vindicate the propriety of their actions; otherwise the ministers of foreign affairs of the countries at war would not have issued them, and they thus furnish unimpeachable evidence of the processes of thought Obtaining in the chancellories of Europe. The documents are further valuable as evidences of the fact that the actions of the nations at war required justification, and for the additional and even more im portant fact that they are addressed not merely to their citizens or subjects at home, but primarily to the Opinion of neutral countries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at ... This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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