lion Dillingers scattered throughout the woods. It is the dizziest, gaudiest, grandest, damnedest sort of bust that the human mind can imagine. The whole body of the people, high and low alike, are all the same when the bands begin to play and the tramp, tramp, tramp of marching men converts every heart into a cocktail shaker. Everyone knows that the country really stepped into the World War with shivers of delight and that nine Americans out of ten had a roaring time until the show was over...War to the typical young fellow is a colossal release. The problem of making a living...departs from his shoulders. He ceases to be a nonentity and becomes a public figure...There is someone to clothe him and someone to tell him what to do. He has a gun in his hands and feels like a man...No more lordly life is imaginable. The soldier stands proudly above all the ordinary laws. Even the laws of economics are repealed for him.

"As for the rest of the population,...those who stay at home enjoy war even more than those who take a hand in it...The minute war breaks out the whole country heaves a vast sigh of satisfaction. All the rules are suddenly suspended. There are new and better jobs for everyone... Every girl has two beaux and every boy has three girls. The old fellows make speeches, hunt spies, try to get their share of the easy money. The old gals knit socks, cheer the parades and dream of handsome generals coming home to steal them from their husbands. I'll begin to believe war can be abolished when the pacifists show me a way to change all this. What I call for, of course, is a complete renovation of human nature. Science is mighty and may accomplish anything in time; it may even accomplish this."

Struggle is a universal phenomenon of life. Whether or not modern war can be justified on biological grounds depends entirely upon our frame of reference, on our mental and emotional attitude. What do you consider your social unit includes? According to history, the social unit has gradually expanded as intercommunication between peoples increased. We have to go only a little way back to recall the time when every man carried a gun and even the family on the other side of the mountain were "furriners."

Those who regard the modern world as a closely knit community where no group of people can ever live entirely isolated and independent, would say that war of man against man has, in modern times, become treason to the human race. From the internationalists' frame of reference, those who incite war by means of mass emotional conditioning of the populace are traitors to humanity. A good deal depends, we see, upon one's "mental stance."

William James years ago claimed that the martial type of character, the desire to live dangerously, can be bred without war. "We can inflame the civic temper as past history has inflamed the military temper. We must unite all groups to war now not against each other but against pain, disease, poverty and sin."

EDUCATION STOPS WITH WAR

No

It is now well recognized that in time of war, education stops and propaganda takes its place. Indeed, this mass emotional conditioning has become one of the most effective weapons of modern warfare. nation can afford not to employ this psychological whip which forces a whole nation to act reflexively and not reflectively. Frederick the Great, long before "psychology" was ever heard of, said "if soldiers would think there would be no war."

Hence, military training on the one hand, and a literal or scientific training, that is, education, on the other, have entirely different motives. Here is a very candid statement made by Lieutenant-Colonel C. L. Hall of the West Point Military Academy in School and Society: "But of course the true educator makes a different set of demands on any institution of learning. By him the college is expected to produce men capable of adding to the store of human knowledge. He also expects a college to teach a man how to enjoy the use of the intellect, as distinct from his wits. Educators differ greatly as to the extent to which the modern college meets these demands. But West Point does not pretend to meet them at all. It cannot do so without entirely changing itself... And no reform is possible for an army officered by men with a 'show me' attitude toward the dictates of higher authority cannot be relied on to win battles."

MAN AGAINST WAR

While it may be argued that war, like slavery, may have been of service to civilization in the past, today it seems to have outlived its usefulness. It is essentially destructive and of no benefit either to the victor or vanquished.

The council of directors of the Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues in an Armistice Day pronouncement for 1937, said, "War is not inevitable and not a part of 'human nature.' It is fought by men who often do not know why they are fighting, doing things which are repulsive to them but which they have been told they must do. It can be prevented. If we learn how to discount the propaganda of warmakers and how to insist upon the peaceable adjustment of international conflicts (as we have upon the peaceable adjustments of individual conflicts), there is no psychological reason for wars to continue."

At its annual meeting in 1936, the New York State Medical Society adopted an anti-war resolution reading: "We are opposed to war because in all its forms it involves destruction of life and the maiming of bo

dy and mind, as well as endless misery and suffering....incalculable losses in human life and happiness."

General Smedley D. Butler, a well-known "devil-dog" fighter says in Forum for September 1934: "War is a racket; possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope... But there is a way to stop this racket. It cannot be smashed by disarmament conferences, by peace parleys at Geneva, by resolutions of well-meaning but impractical groups. It can be effectively stopped only by taking the profit out of war. The only way to stop it is by conscription of capital before conscription of the nation's manhood. One month before the government may order the young men of the nation to be killed, it must serve notice of conscription upon the country's capital. Let the officers and directors of our armament factories, our gun builders and munitions makers and shipbuilders all be conscripted--to get $30 a month, the same wage paid to the lads in the trenches."

In a recent poll of several hundred American psychologists, all of whom have studied man's agressive instinct thoroughly, more than ninety per cent of these experts denied that any proof existed for the view that man's instincts lead inevitably to war. It seems to me significant that today, in democratic nations, war is fast losing its glamour and social value--if it ever had any. Man is an agressive as well as a loving creature, it is true. He must find substitutes and moral equivalents for war. I believe that he can and will.

(The sixth and seventh in a series of articles by Dr. Spencer and based on lectures in Personal Hygiene delivered at the School of Medicine, George Washington University.)

BOOK REVIEWS

THE FIGHT FOR LIFE:

PAUL DE KRUIF.

YORK. 1938. 338 PAGES.

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, NEW $3.00.

"The common inheritance of mankind has now become the right to live." This is a truth which Paul deKruif--story-teller of life and death holds to be self-evident. In his new book he tells a story of the coming of age of medical science, a period in which medical research has come out of the laboratory and stands armed with power and glory to fight the people's battle against maternal mortality, syphilis, tuberculosis, infantile paralysis and pellagra.

"The Fight for Life" takes the battle which public health men and women are fighting today to the people. The chapters unfold a story long familiar to health workers--the struggle, the years of patient research, the failures and triumphs of public health in finding (and here's the rub) death fighting methods that are cheap enough to give life to all those threatened. Goldberger and DeKleine fighting pellagra with powdered yeast at two cents a head a day. Beatrice Tucker in the Chicago Maternity Center fighting needless maternal deaths, in homes SO wretched that the idea of keeping out childbed fever, of scotching toxemia, of stopping hemorrhage would seem laughable. Detroit against Tuberculosis with E. J. O'Brien, Bruce Douglas and Henry Vaughn as commanding officers. Armstrong, Harrison and Schultz in the infantile paralysis fight for a cheap and practical preventive. Kislig and Simpson and their co-workers perfecting artificial fever against syphilis. 0. C. Wenger and the Surgeon General bringing syphilis into the open and rousing the nation to a people's fight against what deKruif calls "the ghastly luxury."

Finally the story of medical research's two-year old miracle--sulfanilamide and how and why this new leap forward in curative medicine, cheap in itself, still requires the skilled physician for its administration.

These are the stories which deKruif tells with all his power to move, to enlist every reader in the people's fight for life. He does it in this book with what seems to us a deeper understanding of the prime obstacle against health for all the people than was revealed in his "Why Keep Them Alive?" It is a national need he finds--"None of these fights are local ones. Babies are born in Maine as well as in California. TB is a killer the nation over. Syphilis is rampant everywhere. All these battles are mass-fights, fights to prevent further death, or they are nothing." And he stands for government participation, government responsibility in this defense program which he envisions. In order to make this a reality now, de Kruif's book is a fine piece for recruiting those "citizen partners" which Surgeon General Parran has said are essential for any real advance in the prevention of death and personal disaster.

Few will fail to enlist under deKruif's credo, "That the relief of suffering and the prevention of dying cannot be best served, for all, so long as there remains any money consideration between the people and the fighters for their lives.

This reporter believes that all considerations of private profit are not only wasteful but infamous if they frustrate the fight for life, if they deny the right of one human being to live.--ELIZABETH G. PRITCHARD, Office of Health Education.

THE PUBLIC ASSISTANCE WORKER, HIS RESPONSIBILITY TO THE APPLICANT, THE COMMUNITY, AND HIMSELF: A SYMPOSIUM OF SIX DISCUSSIONS. ED

ITED BY RUSSELL H. KURTZ. RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, NEW YORK. 1938. 224 PAGES. $1.00.

This symposium of six articles deals with case work among recipients of public assistance. The authors are welfare authorities of the Russell Sage Foundation, the Family Welfare Association and the social service schools of the universities of Michigan, Minnesota and Chicago.

Chapter I traces the history of public aid in America through four stages of development: Almshouse care and direct family relief, from colonial days to about 1909; the years 1909 to 1929, which were marked by the rise of relief of special groups in their homes; 1929 to 1936 when the various types of unemployment relief were the focus of attention; the contemporary period with all the complexities of the Sucial Security program and widespread public welfare reorganization. The succeeding four chapters serve to introduce specific types of problems which the public assistance worker will have to meet and to outline the knowledge he must acquire if he is to render truly effective service. Books, articles and periodicals containing more detailed discussions are listed in a nine-page bibliography at the back of the volume. The final chapter touches upon professional standards, social service schools, employment of social workers, union affiliations, and civil service status.

The social assistance worker, it is stated, holds a key position in making the whole welfare program function efficiently. There is no type of need not likely to be encountered somewhere among the individuals and families he serves, and there is no social agency with which he does not need to cooperate. His job is not merely to determine eligibility for assistance and the amount and kind to be granted. It should go far beyond that initial point and lead to "advancement of health, promotion of the welfare of children, conservation of individual and family morale, stimulation of self-sufficiency." For the accomplishment of these broader purposes, it is essential to use the facilities and personnel of many agencies, particularly those engaged in health protection and provision of medical care. Hence the principles of service and the administrative and financial problems set forth in The Public Assistance Worker might well be studied by the public health worker and the medical profession.

Chapter IV, Problems of Health and Medical Care, is of especial interest in that it reveals the resourcefulness demanded of the case worker in adapting available health facilities to needs and in seeking maximum results under limited medical care budgets. The author, Dora Goldstine of the University of Chicago, notes, however, an encouraging trend toward integration of health care into the public assistance program. Impetus in this direction has come from the Social Security provisions for child and maternal welfare and for aid to the blind and