ORIGINS OF WAR

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 15, 12 October 1927, Page 11

ORIGINS OF WAR

BRITISH DOCUMENTS PUBLISHED IN INTERESTS OF HISTORIC TRUTH Rugby, October 10. The first two volumes of British documents on “The Origin of War, 1898 to 1914,” which have been edited by Dr. Gooch and Dr. Temperley; have been .issued by the Government Stationery Office. Volume lis called “The End ol British Isolation,” and volume II “The Anglo-Japanese Alliance atid the FrancoBritish Entente.” The decision to publish this selection of diplomatic documents was made by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, when he was Foreign Secretary, and was subsequently confirmed by Sir Austen Chamberlain. Mr. MacDonald’s view was that as the secrets of the archives of Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburgh had been disclosed to the world, it would be in the interests of historic truth that contemporaneous British dispatches and memoranda should also be published. The papers published in the present volumes begin in 1898, when the decision to abandon the traditional policy of isolation, and to substitute for it one of alliances, was taken, and they end with the signing of the Anglo-French agreements in 1.904, which might properly be described as the establishment of the Entente Cordiale.—British Official Wireless.