while Capetian and Angevin princes might quarrel, spiritual and institutional affinities held the peoples of the two countries closely together. Until the fifteenth century, wars engendered little popular animosity. Though writing with the confessed object of emphasizing the "points in common between the two peoples", the author is not enticed by his aim into a distortion of historical fact. The book makes no contribution to knowledge, but it furnishes a useful and readable corrective of the commonly accepted view of the traditional animosities of the two great western allies.

To present in perspective the most salient facts about presentday government" within the compass of eighty-two pages is a rather ambitious undertaking. It has been attempted by Herman Finer with considerable success in one of The World of To-day series, Foreign Governments at Work: An Introductory Study (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1921; 84 pp.). A suggestive preliminary chapter discusses the problem of government as the problem of power wielded by certain people elevated to official positions; the reasons for the difference and likeness between systems of government, and the influence of history, dominant personalities, and concious imitation in shaping constitutional development. The remaining chapters on France, the new German Constitution, and the United States (with a few references to Switzerland) consider only distinctive features of the governmental systems. The text will be of interest to the general reader and the footnotes will be of value to the student, since they give many references to recent literature, particularly that dealing with the new German Constitution. There are a few positive errors and half-truths, but in view of the abbreviation that was necessary, it is remarkable that these are not more numerous. Mr. Finer is an assistant in the Department of Public Administration of the London School of Economics, and acknowledges the assistance of Mr. Harold Laski. Mr. Laski's influence is discernible in the emphasis on certain points and in the idiosyncrasies of the footnotes.

Of the new constitutions adopted in Europe the most important is the German, and of the many treatises which already deal with it, the most valuable is M. René Brunet's La Constitution allemande du 11 Août 1919 (Paris, Payot, 1921; xviii, 364 pp.). The author is well-equipped for his task. He is professor of constitutional law at Caen, and, while preparing his book, was counsellor of the French Embassy in Berlin. His discussion avoids the pitfalls of nebulous theory and the easy paths of simple description, but the pity is that

with his facilities for observation and documentation, M. Brunet has not produced a better book. He does well not to emulate the German writers who are producing ponderous tomes on theoretical points or arguing for particular changes, but, on the other hand, M. Brunet has been too content to paraphrase the text of the Constitution, and, while he adds much, he could have added a great deal more in making accessible the vast pamphlet literature which was issued to persuade Germany's "founding fathers", and in analyzing more at length the Weimar debates to show the suggestions that were discarded and the sources of the provisions that found their way into the final instrument. The major portion of the book, however, is wisely devoted to the more important and unusual points of the Constitution. Is Germany a unitary or federal state (Einheitstaat oder Bundesstaat)? M. Brunet inclines on the whole to the former view. The tests that he applies are the powers of the individual states (Länder) to dispose of their own territories, to determine their forms of government, and to participate as states in formulating the will of the Reich (page 61). The place of Prussia in the Reich receives careful consideration, and there are interesting sections on direct government, executive responsibility, the diluted bicameral system, and the very advanced provisions for nationalization and the control of economic life. Particularly to be commended is M. Brunet's discussion of the councils during the events leading to the revolution; the struggle of the advocates of functional representation in the constitutional assembly, and the final compromise on the National Economic Council (Reichswirtschaftsrat). The author is conservative and objective in his treatment, and while he has a few doubts as to whether the Constitution will work, he does not hesitate to praise it. From the point of view of technical jurisprudence, he declares it to be "well made"; and in spite of some obscurities, it is "logical, audacious, carefully conceived and solidly built" (page 320). An introduction to the volume is contributed by M. Joseph Barthélemy, who is known to American students as a professor of law rather than in his new rôle of a member of the Chamber of Deputies. The introduction is written in a parliamentary rather than an academic manner: from the point of view of French security, the unitary features of the Constitution cannot be commended. Hopes are deceived and perils are not lessened. The Constitution completes the ideal of Bismarck (page ix), and while M. Barthélemy admits the possibility of Et ab hoste doceri, the safety of France is the standard by which the German governmental arrangements are judged.

Especially

In his Modern Democracies Lord Bryce regretted that historians and political philosophers have paid so little attention to the governmental institutions of the twenty republics (other than the United States) in the Western Hemisphere. "Most writers," he said, "have been content to refer to them as awful examples of what befalls people who have cast themselves loose from monarchial institutions. Even Sir Henry Maine in his ingenious but elusive book on Popular Government (published in 1885) did not hesitate to make them the basis of his case against Democracy." welcome, therefore, is a very careful study of the political institutions of one of these countries, L. S. Rowe's The Federal System of the Argentine Republic (Washington: The Carnegie Institution, 1921; vii, 161 pp.). It should be of particular interest to American students since the constitution of the United States has had a great deal of influence on the form and content of the Argentine federal system. This influence, Mr. Rowe points out, has been exaggerated, and the constitutional practices of the two countries disclose many contrasts of fundamental significance. "The opportunity is thus afforded to study the operation of constitutional provisions identical in form under totally different conditions." Half of the monograph is given over to historical material and a discussion of the relation of the federal government to the provinces. The second half is devoted to the organization and principles of the federal system. The bibliographical note is a complete index of works on Argentine's constitutional law and appendices give the text of the constitution, a summary of the electoral law, some documents illustrative of the republic's constitutional development, and statistics of illiteracy-a condition which makes some oligarchic and central control inevitable. Mr. Rowe's study was made during an extensive residence in Argentine. If it is followed by monographs on some of the other South American governments, Lord Bryce's regret will no longer be well founded.

For many years to come students of politics will be profoundly interested in the manner in which governments met the tests imposed upon them by the exigencies of the world war. Flexible constitutions were changed; rigid constitutions were stretched to the breaking point; new experiments were made; machinery functioned differently and was added to. A rather conservative critic has said that in England Mr. Lloyd George's War Cabinet worked as many changes in the English Constitution as had the previous century of growth. In the United States the chief effects were in the vast

extension of the powers of the federal government and the increased importance of the presidential office. The latter problem is fully dealt with by Mr. Clarence A. Berdahl's War Powers of the Executive in the United States (Urbana, University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, 1921; 296 pp.). Prepared as a doctoral dissertation, the study is an admirable example of the possibilities of laborious and meticulous research. Mr. Berdahl's labors have made him familiar with all sorts of sources: secondary treatises, judicial decisions, histories, biographies, newspaper articles, presidential messages, executive orders, treaties, public documents, and the Congressional Record. A phrase is even translated from an article written for a French periodical by Professor Garner, of the University of Illinois. According to Mr. Berdahl's classification, the President's powers are divisible into four groups: powers relating to the beginning of war; military powers in time of war; civil powers in time of war, and powers relating to the termination of war. The third group is the most interesting and the most difficult; the questions it raises are not so much those of constitutional law as of political control, departmental articulation, and administrative organization. Mr. Berdahl gives so many details that one retains only a very hazy picture of what actually happened. Special administrative agencies; police supervision with regard to aliens and censorship, control of food, fuel, trade, industry, transportation and communication-these were the most difficult problems of the war government. The experience acquired in dealing with them should furnish valuable lessons for the future. Mr. Berdahl gives all the facts but is reluctant to praise or criticize, and the reader of this part of his monograph will not have any clear impression of administrative machinery which was well run with the President as chief engineer, or that was so poorly adjusted that it failed, or was able to function only with great waste. The very extensive footnotes and a full bibliography help to make the study of value to students.

Two technically useful little volumes of a complementary sort have recently come to our desk. In Field Work and Social Research (New York, The Century Company, 1920; xi, 224 pp.), Professor F. Stuart Chapin (Smith College) has accumulated in a practical arrangement data and exhibits of well-tested methods used in making first-hand investigations of conditions of living and of laboring. The information which Dr. Chapin has collected is organized in such a manner as to make the volume valuable as a handbook as well as a reference work. The use of field-work findings

and a very effective method of correcting undesirable conditions ar described in the volume prepared by Mary Swain Routzahn for th Russell Sage Foundation (New York, Russell Sage Foundation 1920; xi, 151 pp.) and is entitled Traveling Publicity Campaigns The book sets forth very concrete methods of selling ideas of socia betterment, stimulating ambition, and demonstrating how this am bition may be attained. The value of direct communication and of the appeal to the eye has never been doubted. This work, itsel elaborately illustrated, outlines ways and means of making such a appeal by the use of materials transported on motor vehicles.

Broken Homes (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1921; 208 pp.) by Joanna C. Colcord, Superintendent of the Charity Organ ization of the City of New York, is "a study of family desertion and its social treatment." Although it is written by a specialist and will serve as a handbook for the social worker, there is much to be gleaned from it by any reader who is interested in his fellowmen. It shows what patience, tact, sympathy, quickness of wit, and technique are required in this field of work. This is especially well illustrated by the series of letters in chapter vii written by a district secretary and addressed to "Mr. Andrews". They exhibit personal interest in the man and all that concerns him and offer him sound advice and encouragement to make good in an up-hill fight. The book is more particularly worthy of note, however, as showing the development in the treatment of desertion during the last twenty years or so. There was an early stage when charity organizations, by stepping in prematurely to aid the abandoned family, played into the hands of the deserting husband. Upon this period followed one in which things went to the other extreme and disciplinary laws of a rigorous nature were enacted. Finally, the third and most recent method of treatment sets out to moderate the two previous extremes; not to help the family out-of-hand but rather to help them to get on their own feet; not to send the deserter to prison if other ways of dealing with him are practicable. This method attempts to straighten out the tangles caused by desertion by studying the case in its entire setting; getting as much light as possible on all the circumstances, past and present, which may have been contributory causes of the final act. Miss Colcord offers a constructive suggestion for the preventive treatment of desertion in the form of a bureau of family advice; this bureau to rely on the services of social workers, doctors and psychiatrists; to be strictly confidential in nature; and to be run along the lines of a clinic.