Recent Revelations of European Diplomacy
by . NEW York and London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1927. 8vo. viii+ 214 pp. $3.00.
DR. GOOCH’S profound knowledge and impartiality of judgment are well known. He has for many years made a special study of the World War, and, jointly with Professor Temperley, has been chosen by the British Government to edit all documents in the British Foreign Office, from 1898 onward, which throw light on the conditions leading up to hostilities. I happen to know that he declined to consider the task unless given an absolutely free hand, unhampered by censorship, to publish whatever he deemed of historic importance.
In the volume under review he has tried to help ‘students of the World War and its causes to keep pace with the almost bewildering accumulation of material.’ Although the book is only about two hundred pages, and is ‘a causerie, not a bibliography,’ he notes and discusses approximately five hundred volumes dealing with the subject, which have appeared since 1914 in the chief European countries and our own. The material has now, indeed, become ‘bewildering’ and the literature extends into tens of thousands of titles, to say nothing of the publication by governments of their archives, though France and Italy have been notably backward in publishing their official secrets. That they cannot continue their policy much longer without incurring marked suspicion has for some time been obvious.
Gooch’s volume is in reality the résumé of some five hundred others (though I have not counted titles), and in a review of that same number of words it is impossible to discuss the innumerable questions raised by so many witnesses. In the revision of opinion as to leading characters in the drama perhaps one of the most interesting and unexpected has been the collapse of the Venizelos myth, with the now lowered valuation of that statesman’s ability and character. Of the Americans, Colonel House still seems to maintain his reputation abroad. But this review must be limited to generalities.
In considering the accounts and memoirs by actors in the events, one is struck by the fact that they all consider only individuals as responsible for this, that, and the other. There is a plethora of devils, but none of the ‘social forces’ so beloved of the ‘scientific’ historian. In this I think the men of affairs are more nearly right than the Ph.D.’s. I recall a Ph.D. himself saying to me at the Crillon one day during the Peace Conference, just out from a meeting, ‘Don’t ever tell me again individuals don’t count in history. I am through with “determinism” forever.’ Gooch’s own conclusions are general. He clears the international pasture of the old sheep and goats of propaganda days. ‘It was natural,’ he says, ‘that Serbia should aspire to unite under her sceptre the discontented Jugoslav subjects of her neighbour . . . and look to Russia for assistance. . . . It was equally natural that Austria should resolve to defend herself . . . Austria was the only Power, large or small, on whom Germany could rely. ... If Austria ceased to be a Great Power . . . Germany would stand alone in Europe, wedged in between a hostile Russia and a France bent on revenge.’ And so with the other nations, each intent on its own welfare.
There are many suggestions for the thoughtful reader, some unintended. One is the utter impossibility that the busy citizen of a democracy should ever sift the facts about international relations for himself.
The volume is a survey of the literature of the war for the student, not of the causes for the layman. As for the first, it is indispensable, and, for the second, of deep interest.
JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS