on the other hand, expedient for civilization to preserve the right to make this drastic use of sea power, provided that civilized peoples as a whole have the means of determining whether any given war is really waged in the common interest." The sea power of England, which her geographic position renders indispensable to her "until the world has changed not merely its laws but its habits of thinking," enables her not only to continue to expand her empire, but also to veto the expansion of any continental rival. There is experience to indicate that Germany will consent to the continuance of British naval supremacy if it is not employed in a selfish and illiberal frustration of the legitimate activities of other nations. But, says Mr. Brailsford, "it is precisely this opposition to German expansion which in our generation has perpetuated Prussian militarism," for it left to Germany no satisfactory opening for expansion except the Mittel-Europa plan, which demanded force. Britain will use her overseas gains during the present war as pawns with which to purchase the restoration of Poland and Lorraine, or Servia; then her sea power will in fact have triumphed over Prussian militarism. But if she says our colonials have purchased these colonies with their blood and we will not restore them, then far greater quantities of British blood must flow on European fields and the responsibility of perpetuating the burdens and perils of the old order will rest heavily on the shoulders of the island kingdom that entered the war in order to end that ancient and evil order. Even the extension over Mittel-Europa of the German commercial system, its enterprising banks, its national system of production and exchange, followed as it would be by the German socialistic trade-union, "the speeding up of these Eastern lands to the rhythm of German work," is a more constructive ideal than any schemes of "war after the war." The Mittel-Europa project indeed is a scheme "full of menace to the world" and one "that cannot be fitted into any framework of a league of nations." The like is not true of German colonial expansion. "The commercial policy of Germany in her colonies is, moreover, as enlightened as our own and far more liberal than that of certain other colonizing powers." Not only is there no tariff preference for German over foreign goods, but the administration invariably welcomes the foreign merchant. Her government of the natives may not equal that of England today, with all her colonial experience. Neither is it the worst, not so bad as pictured, and was improving. The extension of German control in the French, Belgian, and Portuguese colonies in Africa has received disinterested and intelligent advo cacy in England, before the war, as a means of improving the condition of the natives. Shall we refuse to the most prolific and most energetic of West European peoples any share in the vast undertaking to organize modern economic life in the backward regions of the world, doing so at the cost of the lives of half a million English youth in merciless prolongation of the war and at the peril of all those high hopes for which we have bidden men to fight, or will England accept instead well-grounded hope of "an advance from the era of force to the era of international organiza⚫tion, the gratitude of liberated nationalities, the respect of her Allies and even of her enemies?" One of the strongest parts of this book is that in which Mr. Brailsford argues that the league of nations must have a constructive economic policy. "Peace must mean something more positive than the existence side by side of nations which just contrive to avoid bloodshed. It must come to mean for us some conception of a worldwide society, within which a sense of solidarity may grow up." Of the two great causes of war it must remove not only the first, the failure to recognize nationality, but also the second, the failure to recognize commercial freedom. "A basis of force is indispensable as the world exists today, and a league which was not prepared to use concerted force to repress anarchic force would hardly be worth creating." But "unless the nations who compose it can look upon the league with a sense of gratitude, they will never come to feel loyalty toward it. It must be their benefactor before it can hope to command their obedience. If it is ever regarded merely as an overwhelming association of forces too strong for resistance it will, even at the height of its power, bear the seeds of dissolution within itself. Nations must think of it as the once sundered fragments of nations, think of the United Kingdom, of United Italy, of the German Empire. It would be futile to propose at this stage anything resembling the immense advantage of economic unity and complete internal freedom of trade which the United States, the United Kingdom, the German Zollverein, and United Italy were able to offer to their component states. But something of the kind we must offer. Certain interests imagine that they can derive immense gains from a policy of commercial egoism. To some groups of financiers it would be profitable. Against them we must appeal, not only to the need of escape from the waste of armaments and the woe of wars, but also to the need of a more general prosperity based on commercial freedom." The surest way of keeping the league together will be to attach to membership in it economic advantages so evident and so large that no sane nation will venture to forfeit them. An economic boycott of a self-willed power might, if the world were united, avail as effectively as war to reduce it to reason. That is true only on one condition: "Before committing its offence it must be enjoying profitable economic intimacy with its neighbors, instead of moving toward the conception of national economic independence." This implies at least "most favored nation treatment" toward all members of the league. "No league of peace can be formed until the idea of 'the war after the war' is definitely negatived." Mr. Brailsford ends his book with a detailed discussion of the requirements of a working constitution for the league. Of all its interesting provisions the one most interesting is that for "the representation of peoples." If it is only a league of governments the nations will not be brought into touch. Probably the only way out is to adopt a system of representation in the great council of the league which will give play not merely to national interests but to opinions that cut across the lines of nationality. The council would come to represent, not a mere compromise between states, but the real opinion of the population of Europe, provided its members were elected as liberals, conservatives, and socialists. Let each five millions of population represented in a national parliament send a delegate to the international parliament or twice that ratio as might be determined. Let England's nine be chosen, not to represent a single majority party in England, but by a system of proportional representation so as to reflect the balance of English parties and opinions. In time votes of the council would come to be looked upon, not as victories for this or that nation, but for the ideas that are to organize the united and co-operating world. If we fail to organize for enduring peace "we have failed in the only aim that could compensate the world for these years of heroism and misery, of endurance and slaughter. The settlement of the war and the creation of the league are not two separate problems. They are a single organic problem. The league cannot be based on a settlement that merely registers the claims of successful force." The settlement of the war must be the preparation for the league. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS E. C. HAYES A Soldier's Confidences with God. By GIOSIU BORSI. New York: army. He was killed in action on November 10, 1915. The volume has the quality and atmosphere of the classical tradition of Roman Catholic piety. Lieutenant Borsi, after a youth of ease and literary interests, turned to the religion in which he had been confirmed and produced these meditations as his experience of the war deepened. In addition to the characteristic notes of renunciation, distrust of learning, wealth, and sensuous pleasure, there are expressions of the patriotism and struggles of an enthusiastic patriot and soldier. The writings are mystical and yet marked by a frank and fervent attempt to come to terms with a mode of life quite remote from the cloister. In the pages which deal with his reflections upon the war there is the sense of tragedy over the loss and conflict involved, but there is also an intense faith in the ideal and spiritual significance of it all. He exclaims, "How guilty a world must be in which this terrible law of death and blood must still prevail. Into what an abyss of abjection have we fallen!" The author craves the boon of death upon the battlefield and looks forward to it as the crown of his short but intense life. In a letter to his mother just before the end he cries, "I am not to be mourned but envied." The book is an expression of vivid and sincere efforts on the part of a cultivated and sincere soul to express the moods produced by the great events of the war. If one is able to read the book as a human document, overlooking at times the conventional religious phrases, it will furnish a vivid and appealing example of human nature wrestling with the great problems created in this world-war. The fact that the book has already had an extensive circulation in the author's country and is now translated for a wider circle of readers indicates the strength of its appeal and the quality of its literary finish. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO E. S. AMES The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. By WILLIAM I. THOMAS and FLORIAN ZNANIECKI. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1918. Vol. I. Pp. xi+526. Vol. II. Pp. vi+589. $10.00. These volumes are the first of a series of five devoted to a study of the Polish peasant, or rather utilizing the Polish peasant as a means for developing a certain method of studying sociological problems. This method is explained in the Methodological Note which occupies the first 86 pages of the first volume; briefly stated, it consists in the application of a rational technique to the working out of social problems the solution of which is essential to human welfare and progress. As the authors say, the work is "largely documentary" and consists of compilations and transcripts of many series of letters written by members of the group in question in the two countries. One finds it difficult in these strenuous war times to conceive that anyone ever had time to read such an enormous mass of detailed material, to say nothing of getting it ready for other people to read. Nevertheless one recognizes at once that this is just the way these things ought to be studied, and that this work is a valuable contribution to a muchneglected and very important field of research. We in this country have stubbornly closed our eyes to the significance of race mixture and the mingling of cultures. The whole question of social assimilation has received astonishingly little scientific attention. Some have maintained that the question was wholly biological, others that it was entirely a question of changing customs. Few have sought to apply to it the only scientific method of approach, that of inductive investigation. It is to be hoped that this series will be the forerunner of many similar studies of the foreign elements in our population. The portion of these volumes which will be most read is the 200-page Introduction, which gives a remarkably vivid picture of a semimodernized group of people in their native habitat. It is the transference of this people to the different social environment and life-conditions of the United States and the adaptive processes involved which occasion the problem of the Polish immigrant. In so far as this work contributes to an understanding of the nature of this problem and the methods of handling it, it will be of the greatest value, not only because of the importance of the Poles themselves in our national life, but because the principles worked out in the case of the Poles can be applied to many other immigrant groups. NEW YORK HENRY P. FAIRCHILD Old Worlds for New. A Study of the Post-Industrial State. By ARTHUR J. PENTY. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1917. Pp. 186. $1.60. The title of this book was probably selected with reference to New Worlds for Old, by Mr. H. G. Wells, which is a defense of socialism; for Mr. Penty has renounced socialism and come to the conclusion that it would perpetuate most of the evils of industrialism, besides bringing in a few of its own. Collectivism, he maintains, would exploit the producer in the interest of the consumer and, owing to its materialism and |