Peace Theories and the Balkan War

by Norman Angell

Overview

Peace Theories and the Balkan War is a classic Balkan War history text by Norman Angell that examines the Balkan wars in the years preceeding World War One. Whether we blame the belligerents or criticise the powers, or sit in sackcloth and ashes ourselves is absolutely of no consequence at the present moment.... We have sometimes been assured by persons who profess to know that the danger of war has become an illusion....

Well, here is a war which has broken out in spite of all that rulers and diplomatists could do to prevent it, a war in which the Press has had no part, a war which the whole force of the money power has been subtly and steadfastly directed to prevent, which has come upon us, not through the ignorance or credulity of the people, but, on the contrary, through their knowledge of their history and their destiny, and through their intense realisation of their wrongs and of their duties, as they conceived them, a war which from all these causes has burst upon us with all the force of a spontaneous explosion, and which in strife and destruction has carried all before it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781776529254
Publisher:	The Floating Press
Publication date:	02/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	239 KB

About the Author

Sir Ralph Norman Angell (26 December 1872 - 7 October 1967) was an English Nobel Peace Prize winner. He was a lecturer, journalist, author and Member of Parliament[1] for the Labour Party.
Angell was one of the principal founders of the Union of Democratic Control. He served on the Council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, was an executive for the World Committee against War and Fascism, a member of the executive committee of the League of Nations Union, and the president of the Abyssinia Association. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1931 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933
Angell was one of six children, born to Thomas Angell Lane and Mary (née Brittain) Lane in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, England.[3] He was born Ralph Norman Angell Lane, but later adopted Angell as his sole surname.[4] He attended several schools in England, the Lycée Alexandre Ribot at Saint-Omer in France,[3] and the University of Geneva, while editing an English-language newspaper published in Geneva.[3]
In Geneva, Angell felt that Europe was "hopelessly entangled in insoluble problems". Then, still only 17, he emigrated to the West Coast of the United States,[3] where he for several years worked as a vine planter, an irrigation-ditch digger, a cowboy, a California homesteader (after filing for American citizenship), a mail-carrier, a prospector,[5] and then, closer to his natural skills, as a reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and later the San Francisco Chronicle.[3]
Due to family matters he returned to England briefly in 1898, then moved to Paris to work as a sub-editor on the English-language Daily Messenger,[5] and then as a staff contributor to the newspaper Éclair. He also through this period acted as French correspondent for some American newspapers, to which he sent dispatches on the progress of the Dreyfus case.[3] During 1905-12, he became the Paris editor for the Daily Mail.

Table of Contents

I. The Questions and their Answers

II. "Peace" and "War" in the Balkans

III. Economic Causes in the Balkan War

IV. Turkish Ideals in our Political Thought

V. Our Responsibility for Balkan Wars

VI. Pacifism, Defence, and the "Impossibility of War"

VII. "Theories" False and True; their Role in European Politics

VIII. What Shall we DO?