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This article presents information on various international political developments. A great and prolonged national crisis almost invariably produces at least one commanding figure, England has been looking for this figure during the present war, but it had not appeared until British Prime Minister Edward George Villiers Stanley came to the rescue of a divided Cabinet and undertook to organize an efficient system of voluntary recruitment. At this moment Stanley, though not a member of the Cabinet, is beyond question the most commanding personage in English public life, and he has suddenly reached this place because he possesses the combination of qualities which are needed in great emergencies. Soon after the outbreak of the war, the English Society of Friends in London, England organized a War Victims' Relief Committee, with offices at the headquarters of the English "Friends," Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, London. It has worked away with characteristic modest usefulness, and now prints an account of its varied activities, in a series of reports on its relief work in the devastated Department of the Marne and the Meuse, including medical work, feeding, clothing, and housing.

The article presents information on Italy's neutrality and Italian public opinion during the first World War. What has helped Italy in keeping from the pitfalls that have been dug all about her by the belligerent states who court her support, has been a strict adherence to well-defined and incontrovertible principles of the duties and obligations of a neutral state, without fear or favor. In other words, while her more powerful neighbors are daily committing acts which are a denial of law, Italy stands like a rock on the obligations and observance of international juridic principles.