The conference of nations that has taken place around the peace table at Paris is doubtless the most important of any in history. One reason is the fact that the plan the conference has decided to carry out will necessarily concern most all countries of the world. For railroads, steamships, aeroplanes, telegraphs, telephones, and wireless telegraphy, as never before, have made communication between nations so easy, quick, and direct that distance is almost eliminated, enabling the whole world to think, reason, and act at the same time, and to be influenced as one human solidarity. There seems to be a strong desire in all lands that the peace conference will make future wars not only improbable but practically impossible. But how can this be done? For years countless peace plans and theories have been proposed filling volumes of books, but they are mainly of a speculative nature. Since theoretical grounds have proved inadequate, is there then any experience in the history of the world which can be made a basis for permanent peace? Is there, for instance, any kind of war that has resulted in doing away with itself permanently? The answer would point to the Thirty Years' War, closing with the peace of Westphalia (1648), which seems to have put an end to all religious wars. How, then, does it happen that the peace treaty of Westphalia, of all the treaties in the world, is the only one that has succeeded in stopping all religious wars? We are certainly dealing here with a phenomenal fact in history. The writer has been unable to find any discussion of this phase of the matter. It would therefore seem of interest and importance, especially at the present time, to make a brief anthropological study of the Thirty Years' War which led to such an exceptional and successful treaty. NEW FIELD FOR ANTHROPOLOGY. From the anthropological point of view, history can be looked upon as a vast laboratory for the purpose of studying humanity and assisting in its progress. In the past anthropology has concerned itself mainly with savage and prehistoric man, but it is due time that it take up the more important and much more difficult subject of civilized man, not only as an individual but as an organization[2] or nation, or group of nations. It is true that other departments of knowledge, such as history and political science, have pursued these fields, but unfortunately not always in the scientific sense; to use an ancient pun, it is his story, rather than all the facts. Anthropology in this new field should seek to establish only those truths which can be based upon facts. There are doubtless many very important truths which can not be established by scientific methods, but perhaps they can be better treated in political science, psychology, ethics, philosophy, and theology.