DINNER IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR JOHN BATES CLARK 357 
with international contacts, with the instruction of public opinion, with 
making ways and means for the interchange of ideas, of familiarities, of 
acquaintanceships between men and things of different speech and race and 
origin and religion and form of government. 
Another had to do with international law, with its evolution, its state- 
ment, its codification, its application to problems of the moment. The 
third had to do with economics and history. 
The purpose of the last division was to subject war to a new kind of 
analysis, a new sort of study, a new interpretation. There is an immense 
iterature on war in terms of military action, in terms of tactics and strategy, 
of armies and armor, of personal achievement, of courage, of vast under- 
takings strictly military and naval in character; but war as a human 
experience, a phenomenon, had never been subjected to what may be called 
a clinical study from the standpoint of the economist. What actually 
happens in war to the trade, the commerce, the industry, the finance, and 
food supply, the death rate, the birth rate, the thousand and one things 
which make up the subject matter of social and economic knowledge? 
It was felt by the trustees of the Endowment that if we could summon 
the intelligence of the world to that task, we might make a contribution 
that for all time would set a standard and reveal and interpret a vast 
series of phenomena that would give us a new understanding of war, that 
would add indefinitely to its terrors and its horrors. In seeking the 
country over for a leader and guide into the field, the trustees selected 
Professor Clark. Even you gentlemen, well-informed as you are, probably 
do not realize what he then proceeded to do and how important it was. 
He summoned to meet at Berne, Switzerland, in the summer of 1911, some 
eighteen or twenty of the leading economists of the world. If I were to go 
back over the records and recite their names, you would see that from 
Germany, from Italy, from Austria, from France, from Scandinavia, from 
England, from the United States, from Spain, from Latin-America, he 
summoned the acknowledged and undisputed leaders in economic thought. 
That group spent a week together in close converse and discussion, and 
they formulated a plan to be carried out cooperatively by them all, and by 
groups organized by them in their several countries, under the leadership 
of Professor Clark. That work was well planned, progress was made and a 
second conference was summoned to meet at Berne for the fifth day of 
August, 1914. Five of the economists had reached there before the blow 
fell. When the blow fell, it was of necessity a part of wisdom to await 
the arrival of the plentiful supply of new clinical material which the fates 
were about to provide. 
That task planned by Professor Clark, inspired by him, guided by him, 
is going forward at the hands of his pupil and friend and successor, Dr. 
Shotwell, with the cooperation of some three hundred historians and 
economists in every land. We venture to think that, when completed, it 
will give to scholars, students, men of letters and journalists, an accurate 
source of original information as to just what happens to the economic 
and social and industrial life and organization when the world goes to a 
great war.