Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Collected Economic Essays). By MAX WEBER. publ. 1922. Pp. 579, 8vo.) (Tübingen : Mohr-Siebeck MAX WEBER, who died some years ago after succeeding Lujo Brentano in Munich, was undoubtedly considered in Germany as the greatest contemporary sociologist and economist. The scope of his erudition was unquestionably immense; but to read his works requires no common knowledge on the part of the reader. His collected essays treat of abstract problems, and are mainly critical and controversial. He has also the tendency to enter minutely into questions of detail. His style and manner of expression aim primarily at the achievement of surpassing precision and accordingly often lacks plasticity. There can be no doubt that Professor Max Weber possessed a great reconstructive imagination for social and historical events, but his presentation is rather laboured. EUGÈNE SCHWIEDLAND Die Arbeiterfrage (The Social Question). By HEINRICH HERKNER. Two volumes. (Berlin: De Gruyter & Co. 1923. Eighth edition. Pp. 600 and 630, 8vo.) THESE two large volumes by Professor Herkner of the University at Berlin are generally considered as the standard German work on "Sozialpolitik," the name given in German science to the theory of industrial social reform. Volume I deals with general principles of this practical science, Volume II with its special theories and with the points of view taken up by various political parties. The author's style and his manner of exposition are always lucid and pleasant, and the numerous references to other works are useful. It is, however, a pity that Professor Herkner did not decide to rewrite certain portions of this work for its newest edition. Owing to this, the work appears in some respects slightly antiquated. For instance, it treats mainly of social policy carried out in Germany, and even there only of the questions of factory legislation. Neither the problems of sweated industries nor of farm workers are treated here. Certain other aspects of social development, such as the question of "closed shops," are also not adequately presented. Perhaps in a future edition the author will shorten those chapters, where the material is already old-fashioned, and lengthen others, where newer problems are treated. This would greatly add to the value of this justly renowned work. EUGÈNE SCHWIEDLAND L'Impérialisme économique et les relations internationales pendant le dernier demi-siècle (1870-1920). Par A. VIALLATÉ, professeur à l'École des Sciences politiqués. Un vol. in. 181. (Librairie Arnaud Colin, 103, Boulevard St. Michel, Paris), broché. 8 fr. English translation: Economic Imperialism and International Relations during the last Fifty Years. The Institute of Politics Publications, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass. (New York The Macmillan Co. 1923. Pp. 180.) THERE is not much literature on this subject, and students of international politics are therefore grateful to the author for this penetrating analysis of international relationships during the last fifty years. Only a bare outline, of course, is attempted in this volume, and there is room for further research into the problem of the contribution of economic Imperialism to war. Mr. L. S. Woolf has gone into the history of Africa, one or two minor writers have sketched briefly the influence of Oil on international politics, and Mr. E. D. Morel and Mr. H. N. Brailsford have also produced some valuable material, but they have covered only a small part of the whole field. The great need is for further constructive suggestions that will enable statesmen to control the competing interests and clashing ambitions of the Great Powers and the rival groups within them. All these writers agree that there lies ahead nothing but chaos, unless some form of economic internationalism supplants very soon the strife and jealousy that exist at present. Prof. Viallaté stresses this particularly in his survey of the post-war developments in European affairs. The League of Nations appears on the surface to have made provision for this need, but it is much too curtailed by the fears and greed of the victorious Powers-if, indeed, any can be said to be suchwho framed its constitution, to be of much effective assistance. Its mandatory clauses are especially weak and allow of much exploitation of backward peoples. There is an excellent introduction to this volume, showing how the Industrial Revolution and progress in the means of transportation altered the character of international relationships, and how, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the industrialisation of Western and Central Europe proceeded. The need for securing raw materials from abroad, and of finding outlets for surplus population and wealth is seen to have been a pressing one for all the large countries. Like Mr. Keynes, the author seems to have grasped the importance of the population question. The colonial policies and expansions of the Great Powers are briefly indicated, and the evolution of the conscious Imperialisms of England and Germany is clearly and well traced. America's share in the struggle for spoils is not overlooked, and a considerable part of this work is devoted to an analysis of American activities in the Caribbean Sea and in the Far East. The author tries to be impartial, and one must forgive him if his natural political sympathies get the better of his judgment now and again in his reading of the pre-war antagonisms of France and Germany. On the whole he states his case with great fairness. He criticises strongly many of the actions of all the Great Powers, and shows how their common failure to learn what is meant by a true community of interests was in no small measure responsible for the late war. He traces, on the other hand, the growth of international agreements and conventions prior to 1914 in order to prove how weak they were, and how strong a factor nationalist sentiment still is. This is what Mr. Angell forgot. It is in his handling of the post-war situation that his insight appears to be particularly sound. He sees the essential weakness of the League of Nations to be, that it is hampered in its real work of achieving economic internationalism, by political nationalisms and jealousies. Rightly, however, he sees cause for hope in the fact that, even if only in order the more effectively to prosecute the war, the Allies were compelled by the inexorable logic of circumstances and events to adopt measures of co-operation hitherto undreamed of in connection with men, credit, supplies and transport, thus teaching the necessity of economic solidarity. Modern life is being seen to be too complex to permit of a return to the old isolation and individualism. Old economic units have ceased to exist, and new ones have come into being, but the economic clauses of the Peace Treaties have failed to allow for the fact that to-day international economic intercourse overflows political boundaries. The author errs in saying that Russia has "ceased to count in the world" on account of her revolution, but he sees clearly the great advantage gained by Japan and the United States as a result of the War. In his opinion New York is destined to remain the financial centre of the world. In concluding, he states that “independent life is impossible in a world such as has been moulded by the inventions of the last century," that " America should not persist in her present attitude, or she will find herself in danger-Europe is her greatest customer -and that "only an intelligent and persevering co-operation by all the peoples of the world will conjure away the peril that threatens our civilisation." He thinks that world-wide Free Trade may be too ideal an aim, but advocates the adoption of a general policy of " moderate protection," if not of the principle of commercial equality for all, already tried on a small scale in China and the Congo basin. But he is not an optimist, because "not reason but passions govern the peoples." Whatever our own point of view, we shall have to admit that the writer of this book is a realist, who is also a master of his subject. Even Mr. Lowes Dickinson could make no more trenchant remarks than some of those contained herein. FRANCIS E. LAWLEY The Development of International Law after the World War. By OTFRIED NIPPOLD. Translated from the German by AMOS S. HERSHEY. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1923. Pp. xv+241. Price 7s. 6d. net.) It is probably rare that an attempted reading of the lessons of the War written in 1917 should be worthy of republication in 1923, but the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace of Washington, for whom this book is published, are well justified in their confidence. Professor Nippold's book is of deep and permanent interest, and it has been admirably translated by Professor Hershey of Indiana University, himself a well-known international jurist. Two schools of juristic thought on the future of International Law are discernible to-day. There are those (of whom Dr. J. B. Scott, who contributes the introductory note to this volume, is one) who believe that it will and ought to return to the methods of slow but orderly development by which it seemed to be advancing before the War; and there are others who welcome the new attempt to give an organic character to the society of states, and believe that we can no longer rely on moral influences to secure the observance of law, which must henceforth be enforced. The one is the school of The Hague; the other that of the League of Nations. Professor Nippold is a reluctant but a very earnest convert to the latter, and Part I of this book is, as Dr. Scott says, "to all practical intents and purposes a commentary on the League of Nations before its birth." Possibly Part II, which deals with the future of the Law of War, is of greater interest to-day when, for weal or for woe, the world is committed to the experiment advocated by Part I. The author believes that in the past International Law has gone too far in attempting to treat war as a legal institution; a true international legal order can only be a regulation of the relations between States at peace, and the outbreaking of war marks its failure. The so-called Law of War, therefore, must be sharply distinguished from International Law; it is a survival from an earlier stage of legal development, and is destined, one must hope, to be gradually encroached upon, and in the far distant future to be altogether superseded, by International Law. This process of encroachment will proceed partly by a change in the character of International Law, partly by a change in the character of war itself. The former will be marked by the enforcing of law on a recalcitrant State by a League of the more progressive States, using primarily economic, but in the last resort military, measures of coercion. The future change in the character of war is foreshadowed by the course of the World War, which has made it perfectly obvious that war is at least no longer a purely military struggle. Modern commerce and modern science together have made that idea an absurdity, the former by immeasurably increasing the effectiveness in war of economic strength, the latter by strengthening the power of the military defensive, and so making even a supposedly military decision depend on the greater or less degree of the economic exhaustion of the belligerents. “The modern form of war is the economic war"; it will be increasingly more effective than military war, and happily it is also far more humane. So that just as International Law itself is to develop by the creation of a system of guarantees primarily economic, and only secondarily military, so we may hope that war will develop by an increasing resort to economic measures of pressure, and military measures will fall into the background. Eventually it may be possible to establish a law of war forbidding resort to military war until economic war has been tried and failed. The vista of progress is, therefore, first a stage of wars without weapons, leading in the distant future to a warless era in which the coercive sanctions of International Law will wholly take the place of war. This bald summary of Professor Nippold's thesis does scanty justice to the author's sober enthusiam in the quest of truth, his patient facing of difficulties, his impartial judgments on controverted points. It must suffice here to offer one general criticism. It may be doubted whether the change in the character of war is quite so revolutionary as this book would suggest. "In recent years," says Professor Nippold (p. 114), " people on the continent of Europe had more and more accustomed themselves to look |