ers we call political are exceedingly complex,
and the interests of business, industry and finance are by no means
the whole of or coincident with political interests. There are of
course certain industries and financial interests which may even
instigate wars, and some writers give them a high place among the
causes of war. Especially the makers of munitions and armaments are
credited with a baneful influence in the world. With their
international understandings, their influence in legislative bodies,
their control of newspapers, they are open to the charge of
manipulating public sentiment, and bringing influence to bear upon
governments. They are accused of equipping small countries and setting
them against one another, of deliberately encouraging the race for
military and naval supremacy. No one can doubt that their
opportunities for trouble-making are many and enticing, but to think
of these influences as anything more than the incidental and secondary
causes of war seems to be a curious way of understanding history
(100).

The inside history of the great financiering projects would no doubt
give us some of the main clews to the present diplomatic relations of
nations to one another. If we take into account the various intrigues
in connection with the building of the Bagdad route, the financing of
the Balkan States in their wars, the bargaining of the Powers in
Turkey for financial concessions, the great business interests
involved in the Russo-Japanese war, the loans to China and all the
rest of the financial history of a few decades we should have in hand
materials that no one could deny the importance of for an
understanding of current history. Diplomacy has had added to its
already complex duties the art of securing financial advantages. In
general the art of this diplomacy is to secure these advantages
without war, but there can be no doubt that financial relations have
multiplied the points of contact and strain among peoples, and that
these financial relations have become the main occasional causes of
wars. Howe (100) thinks that surplus capital is to blame for a great
many of the great disasters of modern times--that it destroyed
Egyptian independence, led France into Morocco, Germany into Turkey,
and into the farther East, embroiled the Balkan States; and that the
great war has been a conflict over conflicting interests of Russia,
England and Germany in Turkey. Under the guise of expansion of trade
this i