Ferdinand Schevill

“ Stirred by the war to the very depth of our nature, we are fairly appalled by the shallowness of the analysis and the quackery of the remedies. But even more appalling is this thought: if the gentlemen who will gather together to draw up the great Peace are diplomats or diplomatic historians of the old school, satisfied with things as they are (except for the lamentable inclination of governments to use the loud pedal) , without the vision of a world-union on the basis of a new moral and spiritual orientation, what becomes of the New Europe of which our dreamers dream? ”

“ How does the author envisage the crises which he sketches and, what is more important still, the whole European development? To begin with, as a Frenchman he has a French patriotism; but let us hurry to testify that it is generally moderate and never offensive. Far more significant is it that he persistently sees events from the angle of diplomacy. He is on the whole pleased with Europe: things are as they have to be. The nations are patriotic and armed to the teeth. ”

“ The diplomat-author has the air of perpetually studying the scales and cannot refrain from expressing a joyful professional satisfaction when he is enabled to constate their perfect equilibrium. This felicitous European stalemate has brought it about that the European nations in their irrepressible energy have thrown themselves upon the backward and undeveloped lands outside of Europe, thus producing the colonial movement. ”