As a journalist publishing the _Wall Street Journal_, the _Boston News Bureau_, and the _Philadelphia News Bureau_, and directing news-gathering for the banking and financial communities, I deemed it my duty to ascertain at close hand the financial factors in this war, and the financial results therefrom.
I found myself on the other side, not only in the domain of the finance encircling this war, but unexpectedly in close touch with diplomatic and government circles.

The whole of the war, its commercial causes, its financial and military forces, its tremendous human sacrifices, the conflicting principles of government, and the world-wide issues involved, all lay out in clear facts and figures after I had gathered by day and night from what appeared at first to be a tangled web.
I learned who made this war, and why at this time and for what purposes, present and prospective; and from facts that could not be set down categorically in papers of state.

No papers, "white," "gray," or "yellow," could present a picture of the war in its inception and the reasons therefor.
There is no powerful organization over nations to keep the peace of Europe or of the world, as nations are in organization over states, and states over cities, to insure peace and justice, without strife or human sacrifice.
The immediate causes of this war, and I believe they have not before been presented on this side of the ocean, are connected with commercial treaties, protective tariffs, and financial progress.
It may be wondered that in our country, which is the home of the protective tariff system and boasts its great prosperity therefrom, there has been as yet no presentation of the business causes beneath this war.

Our great journalists are trained to find interesting, picturesque, and saleable news features from big events.

Details of war's atrocities and destructions are to most people of the greatest human interest, and rightly so.