34 
nations have been published, but these 
are detailed and isolated—often mere 
propaganda. In Mr. Baltzly’s lists we 
have an excellent basis for making a 
first approximation in the study of the 
causes of war, since the greatest effort 
was made to cover the ground com- 
pletely, and, moreover, as the compila- 
tion was made without having the 
present research in mind, its errors 
should cause no bias. 
A-LIST OF AUTOCRATS 
The next question is: Whom shall we 
include in a list of the great autocratic 
tulers of recent times? Here, again, it 
is necessary to be systematic and to 
overlook as few examples as possible. 
Some sort of a check-list is essential. 
Such a list is, as far as sovereign rules 
are concerned, already. published, and 
is to be found in the appendix of my 
“Influence of Monarchs’’ (1913). It 
was formulated for another research, 
namely, to measure the magnitude of 
the personal influence of one recurring 
historical type, and the very fact that 
it was made for another purpose makes 
it all the better as a basis for the present 
discussion. 
From this list of sovereigns I first 
picked out all those who undoubtedly 
should be rightly designated by the 
word autocrat: that is, those who were 
autocratic not only by nature, but also 
actually were able to act in an auto- 
cratic manner. To these I added a 
few doubtful names,—sovereigns who 
wished for personal control but who 
did not very well succeed in attaining 
their ends. 
Names taken from the history of 
these same European countries from 
the French Revolution to the present 
day, and also from the history of the 
old kingdom of Poland, were added to 
the list in order that the periods covered 
in “Is War Diminishing?” should be 
completely included here. This pro- 
duced a total of about 120. These 
were then roughly graded in an order of 
eminence and in the following manner: 
Mr. T. Lothrop Stoddard, Mr. Alleyne 
Ireland and myself each chose separately 
the names of: First, the ten seemingly 
The Journal of Heredity 
greatest autocrats; second, the twenty 
greatest; and third, the sixty or leading 
half of the whole. I have now ex- 
tended this to 100 names and arranged 
the first sixty in the order of their auto- 
cratic greatness on the combined basis 
of our separate ratings. In the lower 
portion of the list the order of position 
means but little, but in the upper part 
the differences are more clearly marked 
and are also more important in leading 
to significant conclusions. Probably 
the first ten or twenty names are not 
very different from those that would, 
perforce, be chosen by anyone conver- 
sant with European history if the test 
were to be, as it here is, the grading of 
autocrats according to the vastness of 
their whilom rule and the extent of their 
individual domination, not necessarily 
according to their intellectual gifts. 
The following twenty monarchs are 
given in their order of eminence judged 
solely as great autocrats: Napoleon, 
Frederick the Great, Peter the Great, 
Selim I of Turkey, Suleiman the Mag- 
nificent, Ivan the Terrible, Louis XI of 
France, Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV 
of France, Catherine II of Russia, 
Charles XII of Sweden, Charles V (the 
Emperor); Gustavus Adolphus, Philip 
Augustus, Louis IX of France, Henry 
VIII of England, Ivan III of Russia, 
Henry IV of France, William II (the late 
Kaiser), the Great Elector of Branden- 
burg. 
It must not be thought that the order 
within the group is important, or that 
there is any intention of conveying the 
idea that each one of these persons 
whose name appears ahead of some 
other person is known to be a greater 
autocrat. Every reader through per- 
sonal preference would rearrange this 
list; but any rearrangement within the 
first ten, or within the second ten, 
would make no difference. If many 
were transferred from high to low posi- 
tions, or if great changes of inclusion 
and exclusion were made, then im- 
portant differences in the conclusions 
might result. It seems unlikely that 
such wholesale changes could be jus- 
tified. 
A list is here given of the 62 sovereign 
