Child Health Council, National Committee for Mental Hygiene, National Organization for Public Health Nursing, National Tuberculosis Association.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

The Sociology Club held one public meeting during the Summer Quarter. Professor W. S. Thompson, of Cornell University, spoke on the subject, "The Effect of Rural Isolation on Social Attitudes," and Professor Walter B. Bodenhafer, of Washington University, gave a talk on "The Significance of Behaviorism for Sociologists."

Professor Roderick D. McKenzie, of the University of Washington, gave a series of five public lectures on the subject, "Progress."

The University of Chicago Press announces the publication in September of The Introduction to the Science of Sociology by Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess.

IOWA STATE COLLEGE

Professor George H. von Tungeln will have associated with him next year in the department of rural sociology Mr. H. B. Hawthorne who will give courses and Mr. F. J. Thaden as a member of the research staff. Mr. C. R. Hoffer, who was assistant in the department last year, has accepted an appointment in the University of Minnesota to a halftime teaching position.

IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

Dr. E. B. Reuter, who was last year head of the department of sociology in Tulane University, has accepted an appointment to a position in sociology, with the rank of associate professor.

MIAMI UNIVERSITY

Mr. Ellery Reed, of the University of Wisconsin, has been appointed to the position in sociology occasioned by the resignation of Professor Thomas L. Harris to take charge of the work in sociology in the University of West Virginia.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on Dean Frank Wilson Blackmar, of the University of Kansas, at the June Commencement.

The recently established School for Social Workers of the university graduated a class of sixteen students, all of whom being holders of the Bachelors of Arts degree and several of the Master of Arts degree.

The attendance at the first sociological conference of the Southern California Sociological Society held in June at Los Angeles was over three hundred. Dean F. W. Blackmar, of the University of Kansas, Dr. E. C. Branson, of the University of North Carolina, and Dr. G. S. Sumner, of Pomona College, were the chief speakers.

The enrolment in the nine sociology classes in the summer session of 1921 was three hundred and eighty.

The second edition of The Technique of Writing Social Science Papers by Professor E. S. Bogardus has been published in an enlarged form by the University Press.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS

Professor Max S. Handman visited Europe during the summer where he observed social and political conditions.

TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

Mr. W. E. Gettys resigned his position in Tulane University to accept the professorship of sociology held by Professor E. R. Cockrell who resigned upon his election as mayor of Fort Worth, Texas.

AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE OF TEXAS

Professor W. E. Garnett has charge of the recently organized department of rural social science. All agricultural students are required to have work in rural economics and rural sociology. The courses offered in the department include general sociology, rural economics, rural sociology, agricultural marketing problems, community organization, and advanced rural social science. Before taking up this work, Professor Garnett was professor of rural community problems in the Georgia State College of Agriculture.

WASHINGTON STATE COLLEGE

Mr. E. T. Hiller who was instructor in the University of Texas on a temporary appointment for the spring quarter has accepted a position. in sociology.

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Professor M. C. Elmer, of the University of Minnesota, gave two courses in the summer school, one in criminology and the other in social problems. Dr. Carol Aronovici offered courses on the social survey and municipal sociology.

By an unfortunate oversight on the part of the Journal the name of Mr. Chester L. Rich was omitted from the list of candidates for higher degrees published in the May issue. Mr. Rich is a graduate of Boston University and has a master's degree from Columbia University. He received his doctor's degree at the end of the spring quarter. The subject of his dissertation was "The Trend of Social Legislation in the State of Washington."

UNIVERSITY OF WEST VIRGINIA

Professor Thomas L. Harris, of Miami University, has accepted the appointment as associate professor. He takes up the work to carry out a definite policy on the part of the university to contribute to the training of the social workers of the state.

During the summer sessions of 1920 and 1921 the university cooperated with the American Red Cross in the training of social workers. This summer C. C. Carstens, director of the Child Welfare League of America, conducted a one week's institute for the special benefit of the field workers of the State Board of Children's Guardians. The enrolment of actual and prospective social workers in the course of study was satisfactory.

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Professor John L. Gillin has been granted leave of absence from the university for one year to become National Director of the Educational Service in the American Red Cross. His work will be, first, to outline the educational policy for the training of Red Cross workers; second, to make arrangements with educational institutions to conduct the training; and, third, to recruit promising students for training. Dr. Gillin's address is National Headquarters, American Red Cross, Washington, D.C.

REVIEWS

Is America Safe for Democracy? By WILLIAM MCDOUGAL, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921. Pp. viii+218.

$1.75

The contents of this book were originally delivered as a series of six lectures at the Lowell Institute of Boston, under the title of "Anthropology and History." The position taken amounts to a practical repudiation of psychology and a reliance on eugenics, since the characteristic human traits are due to race and not to culture. The main thesis is stated on page 17.

Every human being and therefore every community. . . . inherits from its ancestry a stock of innate qualities which enable it to enjoy, to sustain, and promote a civilization of a certain degree of complexity. As civilization advances, it makes greater demands on these qualities. . . . . until it approaches a point at which its complexity outruns the possibilities of the innate quality. At the same time it tends to impair these qualities. . . . . Therefore a time comes when the supply no longer equals the demand; that moment is the culminating point of that civilization and of that people, from which the downward plunge begins.

The author is clearly of the opinion that America is in imminent danger of such a catastrophe. In the Preface he says, "As I watch the American people, speeding gaily with invincible optimism down the road to destruction, I seem to be contemplating the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind." The author holds that races have different mental ability, and differ in their instinctive endowments. The chief explanation of racial differences is not to be found in "historical accidents," but in innate differences in certain instinctive endowments. Moreover, the present economic classes in America represent actual differences in mental capacity. Poor people, in America, are inferior mentally to wealthy people, negroes are inferior to whites, and Orientals are inferior to native Americans. The chief reliance for these conclusions is on the psychological tests that were given to the American army. On the basis of these tests, Mr. McDougall asserts that three-fourths

of the population of America are so inferior in ability that they could not complete a high-school education. It may be questioned whether the army tests will bear out these conclusions without further analysis. Certainly it may be questioned whether physicians, as a class, are distinctly inferior in intelligence to army officers of any grade, and yet the results of the army tests do show this. An effort is made to show a correlation between intelligence and moral character, but Dr. Adler has recently tested all the inmates of the penal institutions in Illinois, with the result that they are found to be quite equal in intelligence to the general population as revealed in the army tests.

The author draws some rather sweeping conclusions with regard to the will power of the Americans as compared with the students in colleges in India.

Now the more or less orderly and successful government of the three hundred millions of India by a mere handful of British men during more than a century is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of the world. . . . . Observers have frequently expressed the opinion that, as compared with their British rulers, the natives of India are relatively defective in character or will power, and they have found the explanation of British ascendency in this fact: Now at the very first attempt to apply exact methods in the comparative study of Indians, this opinion finds confirmation.

Upon turning to the "very first attempt to apply exact methods," it appears that the tests were the familiar cancellation tests in which the subject crosses out all the letters of a certain sort. It is quite fair to question whether moral character or strength of will is adequately revealed by quickness and accuracy in crossing out "a' s."

A comparison of the Nordic and Mediterranean races is made to account for the differences between the English and the French. This consists in a comparison of the types of art, the rate of suicide, and the frequency of divorce. Nordic art is romantic, with profusion of objects and details, complexity of relations, vagueness of meaning, the suggestion of mystery and so forth. Mediterranean or Southern art is classic, clear, formal, elegant, symmetrical. One needs but to contrast Homer and Virgil with Wordsworth, Shelley, and Carlyle. Later on, it is asserted that the Nordic race is more scientific and produces philosophy, and since the Greeks are credited with both, Mr. McDougall thinks that they were probably or at least partly Nordic. It is to be presumed that the art of the Greeks is the result of the Mediterranean blood, while the science came from the Nordic strain.