The Confederation of Europe: A Study of the European Alliance, 1813-1823, as an Experiment in the International Organization of Peace

Abstract

To his scholarly treatments of the history of European diplomacy during the era of Metternich which had already appeared in his manual of the nineteenth century, in the Cambridge Modern History, and in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Briannica, Mr. Phillips has now added the publication of six suggestive essays delivered at Oxford in 19I3, dealing with the same general subject but from the standpoint of international pacifism. However opportune these lectures may have been in I913, there can be no doubt that right now they afford most important food for thought to idealists everywhere, especially to Mr. Phillips's own countrymen, who are insisting that in the present war the Allies are fighting for democracy, for the liberties of small nationalities, and for disarmament, and who are urging that victory for the Allies be attended by the formation of a Confederation of Europe with a central executive and police force sufficient to compel every nation to respect the inviolability of treaties. In remarkably clear fashion Mr. Phillips brings out the corresponding idealism among the Allies of a century ago-an idealism symbolized then not so much by England as by the Tsar Alexander-that perplexing and fascinating figure, who had been educated in the pacifist propaganda of his age-in Sully's Grand Design, in tmeric Cruc6's Nouveau Cyne'e, in the peace project of the Abb6 de St. Pierre, in Kant's Zur ewigen Frieden-and who aspired to establish in the world through international guarantees the reign of liberalism, justice and peace. As early as September, 1804, we find Alexander charging Novosiltsov, his special envoy in London, to inform Pitt that