Stakes of the War, Summary of the Various Problems, Claims, and Interests of the Nations at the Peace Table #262268

The reader may get the impression that we have not taken into full account the practical force of the political idealism that has taken such concrete form in the recent state papers of the United States and of our associates in the war; it may be thought that in listing the interests of Russia, let us say, we have overlooked the renunciation of many old interests that has been made by the present revolutionary leaders; or, again, where we state that the possession of a certain territory by a given nation would cut off from the sea certain other nations, it may seem that we have left out of our reckoning the growing determination of statesmanship that the problem of access to the sea for all nations shall be constructively met at the peace conference by adequate international arrangements. In all such cases, however, it must be remembered that this book is not a propagandist document, but an attempt to list all of the concrete factors that must be dealt with by the new statesmanship or by the revolutionist philo'sophy in the at tempt to work out a new order of economic and political relationships.