Approaches to the Great Settlement.
A Female Scholar Tackles The Question
Of Germany’s Power And Of The Resettlement Of Refugees After World War I
[International Feminism]. Balch, Emily Greene. Approaches to the Great Settlement. With a Bibliography of Some of the More Recent Books and Articles Dealing With International Problems. Introduction by Norman Angell. New York: [Published for the American Union Against Militarism]/B. W. Huebsch, 1918.
8vo.; frontispiece fold-out chart of “Racial & National Boundaries in Central Europe;” over 20 other illustrations throughout, including those of “The Allies’ Answer Rejoices Death,” “President Wilson,” “The Peace Tree,” and many others; 44 page detailed bibliography bound in at rear; interior pristine, but for some faint foxing to preliminaries, not affecting text; peach dust-jacket printed in black, jacket lightly soiled, fraying at some edges but essentially good; a handsome copy of a thorough and scarce volume.
First edition of this impressive, comprehensive, and scholarly text on the plight of Europe’s displaced refugees following World War I. Although we have no information about the author, Emily Greene Balch was clearly a serious political scientist – this fact comes through in both the content and the format of her thorough work. The book was written with the intention of providing an “objective account of the successive steps in approaching a settlement of the war…[beginning] with President Wilson’s Peace Note of December, 1916 and [closing] with the various replies to the Pope’s note of August, 1917” (Introduction). For according to the author, “To-day’s events cannot be understood, nor the latest pronouncements as to peace terms intelligently weighed, without that background which this account aims to present” (ibid.).
The chapter titles are as serious as the book’s topic, and many are prescient in terms of the war that would follow (take, for instance, the chapter on The Reichstag Revolution in Germany.) There are nine chapters, whose titles include: “The German and American Peace Notes December 1916. Their Antecedents and the Discussion of Their Proposals;’ “The President’s Senate Address. The Break With Germany;” “The Russian Revolution: America’s Entrance Into The War: Political Unrest in Germany;” “Socialists and the War;” “Views of Russia and Her Allies;” “Development of the Struggle in Germany: The Reichstag Revolution;” “Conferences;” “The Pope’s Note. Replies. Waiting on German Development;” and “The Settlement: Parties, Issues, and Methods.” These nine chapters are followed by a printing of Socialist and Labor Documents on the issue, followed by a printing of the specific details differing between Peace Programs put forth by various countries, followed by a voluminous bibliography.
This book has a special interest for all who wish to help and not hinder the great international effort to destroy German militarism….
It is easy – and it is disastrous – to assume that all America needs to do is to help defeat Germany; that German defeat will by itself cause the destruction of German militarism. But to act on that assumption is to make it certain that the defeat of Germany will have no such result. The distinction between what is necessary, and what is enough, is in war-time particularly hard to establish. German defeat may be necessary; but it is not enough. (p. 1)
A serious and historic tome whose relevance is as current now as it was then.
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