offensive action" (p. 40); we desire to liberate "only other subject nationalities " (p. 56); and the "civilizing " mission a ial powers means only the conversion of the natives into consc diers (p. 48). Next Mr. Dickinson inquires who is respons wars. The answer is not to be found by naming certain stat do but confuse our thought by "talking always about States an tries and Nations, and never about men and women ” (p. 61). each country, the responsibility rests upon the warlike tradition diplomatic class, the professional attitude of military and naval and the pecuniary interest of certain business men, especially a manufacturers (pp, 63-81). And-upon us! "The whole mind of the crowd is one of the fundamental causes of war Over-educated and under-educated alike, we all fall under t condemnation. We have no doubt been duped by our gover but also by our passions (p. 87). Our support can be co even for bad wars and pernicious treaties. For such dee maladies, there are but two remedies: first, judicial and admin machinery, such as has been set up in the League; second, e Workers for peace must (like H. G. Wells?)" rewrite the his politics of the past and the present in the light of the inte ideal" (p. 107). Such is Mr. Dickinson's message—a mess ten with the fervor of an Old-Testament prophet. Occasi generalizations are too sweeping, its denunciations too unsparis reviewer disagrees with much of what the author writes, and ye mends the book, as a purgative for cant.

One of the most prolific causes of international strife is sel special study by Mr. Leonard Woolf, in his handbook on Imperialism (Harcourt, Brace and Howe, N. Y., 1920; The idea is brilliant. An analysis of imperialism, suppleme correcting Mr. J. A. Hobson's now rather antiquated study. needed. Mr. Woolf's contribution merits a warm welcome. cisive, vigorous, and generally well-informed. But it does not up to the author's opportunity or to the public's need. Wr a bludgeon for a pen, he alienates the sympathetic critic a certainly antagonize rather than persuade the unsympathetic. outset, he curtly dismisses all altruistic motives for imperialis blunt negation: "No European State ever conquered or acqu trol over any African or Asiatic territory or people in order upon that people the blessings of European rule" (p. 116) motives, as well, he minimizes, until little is left besides nake istic greed. The economic motive of rapacious exploitati

aggerated all through the narrative of imperialistic aggressions in Africa and Asia. And yet, strangely enough, the author fails to give an adequate explanation of this one motive, which he so much overestimates. Nor does he tell, or attempt to tell, the whole story; he deals only with Africa and China, whereas imperialism is worldwide. In even a rough sketch such as this, one would expect to find at least the bare outlines of the Bagdad Railway project, if not of Persia's strangulation, or of imperialism in the Pacific islands, or of incipient American imperialism in the Caribbean. The book, however, is not too short to contain a prescription of remedies (chapter IV). In the Covenant of the League of Nations Mr. Woolf finds the needed nostrum, despite the fact that— paradoxically-this Covenant "was adopted by capitalist imperialist statesmen who desired to cloak a policy of capitalistic imperialistic an(p. 107). The League should honestly apply the Covenant, confer on itself a "mandate " for China, return to the Chinese "all the railways and economic concessions extorted from them" and all territory taken from them in the last five decades, really open the "Open Door", assist in the financial and economic rehabilitation of China (p. 109). In Africa, the land should be returned to the natives, compulsory labor abolished, education diffused, and self-government introduced gradually (pp. 110-111). There is much good sense in the program, though it is incomplete and perhaps a bit Utopian, at least for the present day.

That it is possible to prove anything by statistics, Mr. Vyvyan Ashleigh Lyons amply but unwittingly demonstrates in a slender volume bearing the interesting title Wages and Empire (London, Longmans, Green and Company, 1920; 96 pp.). The title itself is intriguing. It is the best thing about the book. Certainly few subjects would better repay study than the connection between wages and imperial dominion. Mr. Lyons, however, is one of those hardy adventurers who boldly dare where economists fear to tread. Armed with the shield of faith (in natural science), with the breastplate of self-confident arithmetic, and with Mulhall's dictionary of statistics for a sword, he goes forth to battle. Gallantly he casts his gauntlet in the face of the social sciences. "No enlightenment", he declares, "as to the causes which determine wages is to be had from the political economy books" (p. 5). Instead, he turns to chemistry. The supply of chemical ingredients necessary for human food is adequate to support fourteen million people on each square mile of the earth's surface (p. 11). Hence, our problem is merely" to set vegetable organisms at work converting these ingredients into food. Unfortunately, at least a third of the dry.

land is unsuitable for food-making, and much of the remaining twothirds is poor land, productive of small returns. The utilization of inferior land is the true cause of low wages. That is why wages are higher in the New World, where good land is abundant, than in the Old (p. 20). Oddly enough, the same explanation does not hold for the ten-per-cent superiority of British over Continental wages; in this case, the author accounts for the difference by admitting that British labor is superior to German or French labor-although he modestly adds, "it is difficult to say why British labour should be superior" (p. 59). Did space but permit, we might follow the author through. his twenty-one statistical tables, with their accompanying arguments, and point out one by one the fallacies of his reasoning and the absurdities of his uncritical collation of incommensurable statistics. At the end, he comes to several amazing conclusions: that wages depend not at all upon social conditions, laws, trade-unionism, and similar factors, but only on the supply of land and the advance of science (pp. 52– 53); that it would be feasible for the British Dominions to supply all the food and raw material imports of the United Kingdom (ch. vii) and obtain from Great Britain their manufactures; and that it would be highly desirable to raise a "protecting fence" of tariff duties around Great Britain and her Dominions, making them an economic unit. Only such an arrangement will shelter British workingmen from European competition and raise British wages far above the European level (ch. ix). All this Mr. Lyons proves to his own complete satisfaction and to the reader's amazement—or shall we say amusement? The art of biography is at present experiencing a decided renaisThe natural curiosity of men about other men who have, in one way or another, succeeded in calling attention to themselves, is giving rise to a considerable and more or less lively literature whose creators sometimes seek the friendly and tantalizing shelter of anonymity and sometimes stand forth in the full light of day, joyously giving the full gage of responsibility. It is to the latter class that Stephane Lauzanne, editor of the Matin, belongs. In his Great Men and Great Days (New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1921; 363 pp.) Lauzanne gives us a series of sketches of men whom he has known, and seen in action, such as Delcassé, Joffre, Poincaré, Jusserand, Roosevelt, Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Millerand. These sketches generally center about an incident or two in the career of the unconscious sitter, incidents from which the author knows how to draw the full dramatic or psychological or moral value. M. Lauzanne is an experienced reporter who has witnessed many of the notable transac

sance.

tions of our day, who has approached very near the seats of the mighty and has heard the mighty speak more or less to the point, and who has brought away from these adventures very definite impressions, which he here records with great confidence. While the reader does not always share these positive and sometimes peremptory judgments, he is richly repaid by the instruction and the entertainment contained between the covers of this animated volume. M. Lauzanne is not a fulsome panegyrist nor is he a hanging judge. He finds much to admire in the personages who pass before him ; but the castigations which he liberally bestows by the way keep him from ever being tiresome.

Most of the literature on the control of diplomacy is of a propagandist character and argues for some specific reform without a clear analysis of the conditions under which the foreign policy of the country is actually determined. A description of things as they are rather than as he thinks they should be is the task of S. R. Chow, Le contrôle parlementaire de la politique étrangère en Angleterre, en France et aux Etats-Unis (Paris, Ernest Sagot et Cie., 1920; 326 pp.). The author assumes that there must be parliamentary control and divides it into three categories: (1) legislative ratification of treaties in pursuance of express constitutional provisions; (2) the necessity of legislation enforcing treaties which either do or do not have to be submitted by the executive for ratification, and (3) the control which arises out of "the predominant influence of Parliament on the government". Mr. Chow's discussion of the first two categories is of some value although it is not marked by any special profundity or suggestiveness. The crux of the problem, however, is in the third species of control, and here Mr. Chow is not very illuminating. He greatly overestimates, for example, the control by the House of Commons over the day-byday foreign policy of the English Cabinet, and thinks that in the United States senatorial ratification of treaties results in senatorial participation in formulating policy. With respect to France, which he should know best, Mr. Chow does not throw a great deal of light on such important matters as the influence on foreign policy of the rapid cabinet changes, the actual workings of the Commission on Foreign Affairs (in connection with the discussion of a similar group in the House of Commons), and the power to take decisions and influence his chief possessed by a permanent under-secretary like M. Philippe Berthelot. There is, moreover, no consideration of the part played by financial interests in influencing foreign policy, and that has been of particular importance in France. Nevertheless, the control of diplomacy is such an important problem, and a more adequate solution has been so much.

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discussed in all three countries, that it is worth while to have Mr. Chow's contribution, incomplete as it is.

The literature of Bolshevism is becoming very formidable. At the beginning of the War it was said that everyone who could spell Treitschke and had a bad temper wrote a book on some phase of the struggle, and now we have a similar succession of volumes from soldiers, literary men, newspaper correspondents, socialists and governesses. After all, printing must not be as expensive as the publishers say it is. Of more than ephemeral value, however, is R. W. Postgate's The Bolshevik Theory (New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920; 240 pp.). The book is an analysis of theory rather than a description of successes or failures. The author has sought to be “intelligently sympathetic", for he believes that the Bolshevik ideals are neither inhuman nor logically ridiculous. He considers the relation of Marx to the Russian Revolution, the meaning of a proletarian dictatorship, evolutionary and revolutionary socialism, the differences between Syndicalism, Blanquism and Bolshevism, the recent controversies between Kautsky and Lenin, industrial pacifism, the general strike as a political weapon, the position of the Guild Socialists in England, and the nature and future of the soviet. There are sixty pages of documents not readily accessible elsewhere, including a version of the Manifesto of the Third (Moscow) International which Mr. Postgate has constructed from various excised and garbled texts. He tells us that where it contradicts other Bolshevist utterances, it must be accepted as the ultimate authority. The author has sought to avoid his discussion being "stopped by a violent controversy over facts—such as what happened in Yaroslav, whether Trotsky is a Jew, and such irrelevancies"; but he does not hesitate to devote some of his attention to "facts" concerning the management of Soviet factories.

Of value now only as a contemporary pamphlet is a little book on Bolshevik Aims and Ideals (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1919; 89 pp.). It is a reprint of two anonymous articles which appeared in The Round Table (March and June, 1919). The first article contains some material on the background of the March revolution of 1917 and the manner in which the Bolsheviks came into power. It was intended, in large part, as a justification of the Allied policy toward Russia. "Russia's Revolt against Bolshevism" is the subtitle of the second article, and it is largely devoted to a very sympathetic account of the various political movements in Russia against the Soviet Government and the military attempts by Kolchak and Denikin.