Current Literature
WAR AND DIPLOMACY IN THE FRENCH REPUBLIC By Frederick L. Schuman, Ph.D.
Dr. Schuman undertook for the University of Chicago, as his portion of a collective fact-finding quest to determine the Causes of War, what he calls "an inquiry into political motiva- tions and the control of French foreign policy." In plain English he maps out in the case of France the administrative and constitutional features of the hypothesis on which every nation, in our existing state of international anarchy, conducts its relations with other nations—namely, the assumption that power and a narrow "sacred egoism" is the supreme good and its pursuit the supreme national interest. Possibly this approach to the political problems that afflict the world to-day provides a salutary lesson in realism to the simple folk whence the notion originated that the way to abolish war is to excom- inunieate it. But War and Diplomacy in the French Republic (McGraw Hill, 21s.) is barely more than a rechauffe of facts and conclusions which are commonplaces over here ; and it is written, unfortunately, in a prolix, verbose manner which will send shudders down the spine of the sensitive.
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