The Problem of Foreign Policy: A Consideration of Present Dangers and the Best Methods for Meeting Them

Gilbert Murray wrote this urgent treatise in the immediate aftermath of the Great War, when statesmen believed they had engineered a lasting peace. He was not so optimistic. This sharp analysis examines the fatal assumptions behind the post-war order: that victors can dictate terms without seeding future resentment, that treaties can punish rather than reconcile, that great powers can govern the world through force alone. Murray, a renowned classical scholar, brings historical depth to his critique of the Treaty of Versailles, arguing that the Carthaginian peace imposed on Germany would produce exactly the revanchism Europe claimed to fear. He champions the League of Nations not as utopian idealism but as pragmatic necessity, the only mechanism capable of channeling national self-interest toward collective security. Yet Murray's most penetrating insight is psychological: wars corrupt the societies that fight them, breeding cynicism and manipulation that outlast the trenches. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how the peace of 1919 became the scaffolding for the wars of 1939.