After extended private discussions concerning British policy in the war with Germany in 1915, Edward House, an aide to President Woodrow Wilson, pronounced his partner in the talks, James Bryce, to be one of the foremost living Englishmen. Bryce was an influential writer and lecturer on education and civil law; a Liberal member of Parliament for twenty-six years and, briefly, cabinet secretary for Ireland; British ambassador to the United States in the years before World War I; and author of several books and many speeches giving his impressions of the histories, political systems, and cultural values of the countries he visited. Through all his various activities he sought to promote the dignity of individual lives, the efficient and upright functioning of representative democracy in countries prepared to exercise it, and the harmony of nations in Europe and the Americas. In pursuing these aims Bryce systematically studied the past and...