The Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is organized to ‘promote a thorough and scientific investigation of the causes and results of war.’ In accordance with this purpose a conference of eminent statesmen, publicists, and economists was held in Berne, Switzerland, in August 1911, at which a plan of investigation was formed and an extensive list of topics was prepared. The programme of that Conference is presented in detail in an Appendix. It will be seen that an elaborate series of investigations has been undertaken, and the resulting reports may in due time be expected in printed form.

Of works so prepared some will aim to reveal direct and indirect consequences of warfare, and thus to furnish a basis for a judgement as to the reasonableness of the resort to it. If the evils are in reality larger and the benefits smaller than in the common view they appear to be, such studies should furnish convincing evidence of this fact and afford a basis for an enlightened policy whenever there is danger of international conflicts.

Studies of the causes of warfare will reveal, in particular, those economic influences which in time of peace bring about clashing interests and mutual suspicion and hostility. They will, it is believed, show what policies, as adopted by different nations, will reduce the conflicts of interest, inure to the common benefit, and afford a basis for international confidence and good will. They will further reveal the natural economic influences which of themselves bring about more and more harmonious relations and tend to substitute general benefits for the mutual injuries that follow unintelligent self-seeking. Economic internationalism needs to be fortified by the mutual trust that just dealing creates; but just conduct itself may be favoured by economic conditions. These, in turn, may be created partly by a natural evolution and partly by the conscious action of governments; and both evolution and public action are among the important subjects of investigation.

An appeal to reason is in order when excited feelings render armed conflicts imminent; but it is quite as surely called for when no excitement exists and when it may be forestalled and prevented from developing by sound national policies. To furnish a scientific basis for reasonable international policies is the purpose of some of the studies already in progress and of more that will hereafter be undertaken.

The publications of the Division of Economics and History are under the direction of a Committee of Research, the membership of which includes the statesmen, publicists, and economists who participated in the Conference at Berne in 1911, and two who have since been added. The list of members at present is as follows:

EugÈne Borel, Professor of Public and International Law in the University of Geneva.

Lujo Brentano, Professor of Economics in the University of Munich; Member of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Charles Gide, Professor of Comparative Social Economics in the University of Paris.

H. B. Greven, Professor of Political Economy and Statistics in the University of Leiden.

Francis W. Hirst, Editor of The Economist, London.

David Kinley, Vice-President of the University of Illinois.

Henri La Fontaine, Senator of Belgium.

His Excellency Luigi Luzzatti, Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of Rome; Secretary of the Treasury, 1891–3; Prime Minister of Italy, 1908–11.

Gotaro Ogawa, Professor of Finance at the University of Kioto, Japan.

Sir George Paish, Joint Editor of The Statist, London.

Maffeo Pantaleoni, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Rome.

Eugen Philippovich von Philippsberg, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Vienna; Member of the Austrian Herrenhaus, Hofrat.

Paul S. Reinsch, United States Minister to China.

His Excellency Baron Y. Sakatani, recently Minister of Finance; Present Mayor of Tokio.

Theodor Schiemann, Professor of the History of Eastern Europe in the University of Berlin.

Harald Westergaard, Professor of Political Science and Statistics in the University of Copenhagen.

Friedrich, Freiherr von Wieser, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Vienna.

The function of members of this Committee is to select collaborators competent to conduct investigations and present reports in the form of books or monographs; to consult with these writers as to plans of study; to read the completed manuscripts, and to inform the officers of the Endowment whether they merit publication in its series. This editorial function does not commit the members of the Committee to any opinions expressed by the writers. Like other editors, they are asked to vouch for the usefulness of the works, their scientific and literary merit, and the advisability of issuing them. In like manner, the publication of the monographs does not commit the Endowment as a body or any of its officers to the opinions which may be expressed in them. The standing and attainments of the writers selected afford a guarantee of thoroughness of research and accuracy in the statement of facts, and the character of many of the works will be such that facts, statistical, historical, and descriptive, will constitute nearly the whole of their content. In so far as the opinions of the writers are revealed, they are neither approved nor condemned by the fact that the Endowment causes them to be published. For example, the publication of a work describing the attitude of various socialistic bodies on the subject of peace and war implies nothing as to the views of the officers of the Endowment on the subject of socialism; neither will the issuing of a work, describing the attitude of business classes toward peace and war, imply any agreement or disagreement on the part of the officers of the Endowment with the views of men of these classes as to a protective policy, the control of monopoly, or the regulation of banking and currency. It is necessary to know how such men generally think and feel on the great issue of war, and it is one of the purposes of the Endowment to promote studies which will accurately reveal their attitude. Neither it nor its Committee of Research vouches for more than that the works issued by them contain such facts; that their statements concerning them may generally be trusted, and that the works are, in a scientific way, of a quality that entitles them to a reading.

This monograph on epidemics resulting from wars is designed to bring into light an aspect of international conflict that has never been adequately appreciated. An examination of the facts here presented will indicate that until comparatively recent times the most serious human cost of war has been not losses in the field, nor even the losses from disease in the armies, but the losses from epidemics disseminated among the civil populations. It was the war epidemics and their sequelae, rather than direct military losses, that accounted for the deep prostration of Germany after the Thirty Years’ War. Such epidemics were also the gravest consequence of the Napoleonic Wars.

It may appear that a study of war epidemics can have only historical interest, in view of the progress of modern medical science. Plague, cholera, and typhus can be brought under control by modern methods of sanitation. One can point to the fact that in the present great war, the only serious epidemic that has been reported is the typhus fever epidemic in Serbia. When the medical history of the war comes to be written, however, it will be found that the aggregate losses from sporadic outbreaks of war epidemics have been very considerable. A war sufficiently protracted to lead to universal impoverishment and a breakdown of medical organization would be attended, as in earlier times, by the whole series of devastating war epidemics. And even in the case of less exhausting wars, the chances of widespread epidemics is far from negligible. There is much food for reflection in the author’s account of the small-pox epidemic following the Franco-German War. In 1870 the means of coping with small-pox were as nearly perfect as they are in the greater part of the world to-day. This fact did not save Europe from a widespread epidemic, entailing human losses exceeding in gravity the losses in the field. To-day, as in the past, the probabilities of increased morbidity in the civil population, not only among the belligerents, but among neutrals as well, must be entered as a highly important debit item against war.