But it was not primarily to settle, or even study this problem that I
crossed the ocean and the English Channel in winter. As a journalist
publishing the _Wall Street Journal_, the _Boston News Bureau_, and the
_Philadelphia News Bureau_, and directing news-gathering for the
banking and financial communities, I deemed it my duty to ascertain at
close hand the financial factors in this war, and the financial results
therefrom.

I found myself on the other side, not only in the domain of the finance
encircling this war, but unexpectedly in close touch with diplomatic
and government circles. The whole of the war, its commercial causes,
its financial and military forces, its tremendous human sacrifices, the
conflicting principles of government, and the world-wide issues
involved, all lay out in clear facts and figures after I had gathered
by day and night from what appeared at first to be a tangled web.

I learned who made this war, and why at this time and for what
purposes, present and prospective; and from facts that could not be set
down categorically in papers of state. No papers, "white," "gray," or
"yellow," could present a picture of the war in its inception and the
reasons therefor.

There is no powerful organization over nations to keep the peace of
Europe or of the world, as nations are in organization over states, and
states over cities, to insure peace and justice, without strife or
human sacrifice.

The immediate causes of this war, and I believe they have not before
been presented on this side of the ocean, are connected with commercial