Excerpt from The Catholic World, Vol. 107: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science; April, 1918, to September, 1918 IN the state OF new york. Vol. CVII. - 1these words, though no more true than when written, sound as if uttered by some oracle. The more so, perhaps, since Con rad, like the real oracle of Old, left his readers in uncertainty as to a definite application of his statement. He gave reasons, indeed, and their soundness may be judged from the fact that since the outbreak of the War, they have been clearly reflected in the opinion which there is good reason to impute to Ex President Taft, that care must be taken not to put too much reliance upon formal declarations and upon the machinery of even the most approved international system. 1 But whence this principle was to be derived, or what were to be the con ditions for its honest and forceful enunciation, Conrad, naturally enough, left the future to decide. That it has done so, at last, would now appear to be the case, though the enun ciation has come from a quarter which, doubtless, it never entered into the mind either of Joseph Conrad or of his Euro pean readers to suspect. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.