In all the diplomatic dispatches which preceded the war, there is nothing more pathetic than Sir Edward Grey's despairing effort at the very last moment to picture a better European system. With great caution, while the armies were mobilizing, he suggested a European concert, "some more definite rapprochement between the Powers", a plan "hitherto too utopian to form the subject of definite proposals". As the war has dragged on, other ideas have made themselves felt. The peace programmes most current in England and America to-day were the inevitable reaction to what the lovers of peace knew and felt in the early days of August. There has been a vague but grudging recognition that trade and finance are involved in diplomacy, and there has appeared a mass of literature interested not so much in the machinery of peace as in dealing with the provocations to war.