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The article discusses the immediate causes of the war. Most of the writing about the causes of the European conflict has dealt with the larger and remoter forces which led up to the disaster, rather than with the diplomacy and events immediately preceding. But during the past year or more so many papers have been published which the historical scholar may regard as primary sources and so carefully have these sources been examined and criticized, that it seems possible now to reduce the results that be considered somewhat beyond the realm of opinion and conjecture.

Americans who raise their hands in self-righteous horror when some new atrocity in pre-war European diplomacy is revealed usually have small knowledge of the history of American diplomacy during the same period. They do not realize that the State Department is the most autocratic Foreign Office in the world and, potentially at least, one of the most irresponsible. Furthermore, the President of the U.S. has large powers in the direction of foreign affairs, extending to the use of confidential agents responsible to no one within the government but himself.

If there was one concession that politician Herbert Hoover's critics were willing-to make when he entered the White House, it was that he undoubtedly would seek to improve the quality of the country's foreign diplomatic service. He was no callow provincial, but a traveler who knew the world and its variegated politics and was fully aware of the enormous disadvantages which the United States suffers from being officially represented abroad by men who speak but one language and speak it none too well.

The article reports that the Italian magazine, "Civiltà Cattolica" has published a paper about Vatican diplomacy. The paper addressed the notion that some Catholics wanted the Church to focus on spiritual leadership and avoid the world of politics. The paper discussed how Catholics can benefit from benevolent government which respects Christian principles.

This article focuses on the book "Die Falschungen des Russischen Orangebuches. This book refers to the originals of the documents which formed the gist of the Russian Orange Book of 1914, which was so valuable a part of the evidence adduced in the British papers concerning the outbreak of the war, in "I Accuse," and in other Allied propaganda to prove that Germany wilfully precipitated the war. Readers discover that of twenty- nine Franco-Russian documents published in the Orange Book only nine were honestly printed as written.

The article presents an overview of several political and social issues. The venerable Jules Simon has a striking letter on arbitration in the February Cosmopolis. He says that war was never so likely as at the present moment, and yet never so impossible--never so likely, on account of the many casus belli piling big up in various parts of the world; never so impossible, on account of the fearful nature of any great war and of its inevitable results. A very striking and encouraging evidence of a healthy change in public sentiment in this Senate towards war was seen in the action of the Assembly at Albany on Monday evening.