JOHN WILLIAM BURGESS
THE EUROPEAN WAR OF 1914
Its
Causes, Purposes, and Probable Results
1915
PREFACE
p. I—X
I
THE EUROPEAN WAR OF
1914:
Its Causes, Purposes, and
Probable Results
II
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page)
III
THE
EUROPEAN WAR OF 1914:
ITS CAUSES, PURPOSES, AND
PROBABLE RESULTS
By
John William Burgess, Ph.D., J.U.D., LL.D.
Formerly Professor of
Constitutional and International Law, and Dean
of the Faculties of
Political Science, Philosophy, and Pure
Science, in Columbia
University, New York City
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1915
IV
Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1915
————
Published April, 1915
W. P. HALL PRINTING COMPANY,
CHICAGO
V
PREFACE
THE contents of this little book were prepared
some months ago, but its appearance has been intentionally delayed
until this time. I am not sure that its publication even now is not
premature.
It is a fact of history as well as personal
experience that the majority is generally on the wrong side of every
great question in the beginning. I myself have seen this country in
hysteria four times during my own conscious existence. The first time
was the Anti-Abolitionist craze, when the North as well as the South
rose in what men then fancied to be righteous indignation against these
assailants of the existing order and the public peace, the despised
Garrisonians, but what really was only the rage of a guilty conscience
trying to deaden itself to the knowledge of the sin it was supporting.
And then in less than five years I saw these same men leading the vast
choir of the majority and singing the battle hymn of freedom.
VI PREFACE
The second time was the greenback craze and the third time was the
free-silver craze, when, in spite of the jejuneness of the subject, the
great majority were so affected by it and worked themselves up to such
a pitch of self-righteousness against the rascals, who would make the
debtor pay in appreciated money, as almost to silence their contention
for a sound and honest currency. It took all of the official and moral
power of four Presidents, Grant, Hayes, Cleveland, and McKinley, to
stem this torrent of popular holiness, make men exercise a little
common sense, and feel a little common honesty. And yet I hardly know a
man today who is not ashamed if his grandfather was touched by either
of these follies.
And now for six months we have had the Anti-German
craze, perhaps the most unreasonable of all — for who is so blind as
not to perceive with a glance that the united triumph of the Autocrat
of the Land and the Autocrat of the Sea means their dominance of the
world; and what have the Germans ever done
VII PREFACE
to us to
deserve abuse at our hands — but perhaps the most explicable of them
all, for if the majority has so little correct understanding, in the
beginning, of domestic questions, such as I have cited, how can it be
expected to have any comprehension whatever of a great foreign
movement, epochal in civilization, such as that with which the European
world is now convulsed?
It was quite inevitable that the attention of the
vast majority should be riveted primarily upon some of the nearer
lying, more unimportance, incidents of the movement, and that these
should be misinterpreted and these misinterpretations become
exaggerated until they should finally assume the form of caricature and
catchword. There are some evidences at present that we are beginning to
emerge from this spell of excited and misguided feeling and to look at
things more calmly and objectively. It is this which has encouraged me
to release this little volume for publication at this juncture.
March, 1915. J. W. B.
VIII
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IX
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
|
|
PAGE
|
I
|
The Occasions of
the War
|
1
|
II
|
The Proximate
Causes of the War
|
45
|
III
|
The Underlying
Causes of the War
|
82
|
IV
|
American
Interests in the Outcome of the War
|
113
|
V
|
The
Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Crime at Sarajevo
|
155
|
VI
|
Belgian Neutrality
|
167
|
VII
|
The Export of
Arms and Munitions to Belligerents
|
179
|
VIII
|
The German Emperor
|
189
|
|
Index
|
203
|
X
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Last update: July 26th, 2014
