EDITOR'S PREFACE 
In the autumn of 1914, when the scientific study of the effects of 
war upon modern life passed suddenly from theory to history, the 
Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace proposed to adjust the program of its re- 
searches to the new and altered problems which the War presented. 
The existing program, which had been prepared as the result of a 
conference of economists held at Berne in 1911, and which dealt 
with the facts then at hand, had just begun to show the quality of 
its contributions; but for many reasons it could no longer be fol- 
lowed out. A plan was therefore drawn up at the request of the 
Director of the Division, in which it was proposed, by means of an 
historical survey, to attempt to measure the economic cost of the 
War and the displacement which it was causing in the processes of 
civilization. Such an “Economic and Social History of the World 
War,” it was felt, if undertaken by men of judicial temper and ade- 
quate. training, might ultimately, by reason of its scientific obliga- 
tions to truth, furnish data for the forming of sound public opinion, 
and thus contribute fundamentally toward the aims of an institu- 
tion dedicated to the cause of international peace. 
The need for such an analysis, conceived and executed in the 
spirit of historical research, was increasingly obvious as the War 
developed, releasing complex forces of national life not only for the 
vast process of destruction, but also for the stimulation of new 
capacities for production. This new economic activity, which under 
normal conditions of peace might have been a gain to society, and 
the surprising capacity exhibited by the belligerent nations for 
enduring long and increasing loss—often while presenting the out- 
ward semblance of new prosperity—made necessary a reconsidera- 
tion of the whole field of war economics. A double obligation was 
therefore placed upon the Division of Economics and History. It 
was obliged to concentrate its work upon the problem thus pre- 
sented, and to study it as a whole; in other words, to apply to it the 
tests and disciplines of history. Just as the War itself was a single 
event, though penetrating by seemingly unconnected ways to the 
remotest parts of the world, so the analysis of it must be developed