that the book does not bring the situation down to date. The value of the book as describing the present situation has been greatly reduced by the many changes since the Carranza régime, both in improved conditions in Mexico and the arrangement of the Mexican debt, through an agreement with the International Banking Commission in New York in June, 1922. The Mexican Mind (Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1922; 303 pp.) by Wallace Thompson may be regarded, the author modestly affirms, as a humble beginning of a task to which many minds and many years should be devoted the comparative study of the psychology of the Latin and Saxon people of America. The author is to be congratulated for being willing to tread this untrod and exceedingly difficult path, with his limitations of equipment. His descriptions of customs and of play-life, his emphasis upon the individualism, pride and inertia as important psychological traits, and his insistence that the whole "Mexican question" is one of education, are valuable and true points. His stress on the necessity of adapting education to the Mexican mind is also important. There are many good paragraphs and pages scattered through the book. But the book as a whole is bad. While the author has lived in Mexico many years, he has evidently never sympathized-suffered with-the Mexicans. As a foreigner and a newspaper man he has met the governing classes and the serving classes in the capital city and probably been entertained in some large haciendas and Indian villages. But he would hardly have written this book if he had really lived with the people. The author bases his whole analysis of the Mexican mind on the belief that it is entirely Indian. And then he makes this remarkable statement: "The Indian culture, if we may so use the term, is perhaps the most sinister threat against the civilization of the white man which exists in the world today." The Yellow Peril, then the Moslem Peril, and now the Indian Peril! The author seems to enjoy turning out books on Mexico. This is the third one in the last two years, the others being The People of Mexico and Trading with Mexico. One of these at least is the result of Mr. Thompson's work on the Doheny Foundation, which was endowed by the oil magnate's generosity to study Mexican Problems but came to grief and was soon abandoned. Some time ago in discussing the difficulty of selecting a title for a book, a publisher pointed out that one of the pitfalls to be avoided was a misleading title. The title chosen by the authors, William F. Notz and Richard S. Harvey, for the book under review, American Foreign Trade (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1921; xv, 593 pp.), would seem to indicate a discussion of American export markets and methods. We learn, however, from the subtitle that the book actually is concerned with "American Foreign Trade as promoted by the Webb-Pomerene and Edge Acts with Historical Reference to the Origin and Enforcement of the Anti-Trust Laws". This historical reference to the anti-trust laws fills the first 110 pages. We then discover that we must read another thirty-four pages concerning combinations of industries in various countries before we come to the discussion of the Webb law. Parts IV and V are given over to the discussion of the Webb-Pomerene and Edge Acts. Part VI considers " Compacts in World Commerce". Aside from the "historical reference", the method of presentation in much of the book is a quasi-legal discussion phrase by phrase of the meaning of the law as interpreted by various court cases with the authors' comments scattered in between the reports of cases. An appendix contains the text of the laws as well as certain forms and agreements which have been used in connection with the Webb-Pomerene and Edge Acts. In their preface the authors state that the information presented has been scattered among many sources and consequently it has been “inaccessible to the business man, the lawyer, librarian, banker, exporter, or to the student". The accessibility of the material has been advanced one step by being included between the covers of one book. The lawyer prefers simply statements of the conditions of the cases tried in the courts under the law with footnotes referring to the cases themselves. The business man wants a brief, concise analysis with a clean-cut distinction between proven fact and suggestive possibilities. Either type is helpful to the student. But in this book answers to many questions still must be dug out from the material as presented. Thus it seems to the reviewer that the discussion in many parts of the book could be cut down with profit and that the style of writing lacks the definiteness which is so essential in a work of this kind. It should be added in all fairness that there are certain sections of the text to which this criticism does not apply, as they are ably written. |