The topic for discussion given me by our Executive Committee was originally, as printed in our programme, “What Constitutes a Declaration of War,” suggested doubtless by the early stages of the present war in the East. But as full liberty was granted to alter this subject, I shall somewhat broaden my title and ask your attention to those steps, diplomatic and then forcible, which close negotiations and begin hostilities and which may perhaps properly be summed up under the caption “The Beginnings of War.” Of these steps a Declaration of War may or may not be one.

Here lie two main topics or lines of inquiry:

(1) At what point in the discussion of a serious international question will a resort to violence be the natural next step and not a treacherous act?

(2) From what moment does a war date?

If it were necessary, or even customary that a formal declaration of intent to make war beginning at a set time, should precede hostilities, neither of these inquiries would be needful. Perhaps such a rule is desirable. The whistle of the referee is at once a fair warning and marks a fixed moment. It legalizes the beginning of violence. But although war is called a game and has highly conventionalized rules, it is a game without a referee. The whistle must be blown by the disputants, not by a third party.