marriages, caused by an extended educational period, are causing racial deterioration, and yet they conclude, in another place, that in this particular group, late marriages have been but an insignificant factor in the decline. It is rather their low marriage rate and restriction in the married state. Equally poor analysis is found in the discussion of the high fertility of foreign-born women in relation to "competition."

The authors have done well, however, in adding their own voices to the voices in the wilderness warning that the stock from which we have been drawing our college material is not reproducing itself. No mention is made, though, of the most fundamental fact of all-that voluntary parenthood for the "lower" classes would go a long way toward correcting an evil the existence of which all intelligent people deplore.

NORMAN E. HIMES

CORNELL COLLEGE MT. VERNON, Iowa

Personality in Politics-Reformers, Bosses, and Leaders: What They Are and How They Do It. BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1924. Pp. 114. $1.50.

The approach to social science through the study of personality types is well illustrated by this volume. Three outstanding types found in American politics are described-the reformer, the boss, and the leader. The materials on the boss are the best. Ten well-known political bosses were studied, and these materials served as the basis for this section of the volume. The characteristics of these bosses were found to be so diverse that few generalizations could be made concerning them. The important thing about the boss is that he knows how to control. The reformer, painted as a generalized type, is an uncompromising person who is anxious to put across an ideal, but is ignorant of practical methods of control. He is unsuccessful in politics. The leader is the ideal person who can apply the successful methods of the boss in the service of unselfish ends and high ideals.

These materials were presented as a series of lectures at the University of North Carolina. They represent an attempt to attack problems of social control through personality studies of successful and unsuccessful leaders. JAMES ALFRED QUINN

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Social Organizations Working with Rural People. BY WALTER A. TERPENNING. Kalamazoo, Michigan: The Extension Department, Western State Normal School, 1925. Pp. 125.

This book is a report of a survey of rural institutions in Hillsdale and Lapeer counties, Michigan. The result is a repetition of the old story: The agencies are inefficient. Some of the findings follow: (a) lack of correlation between agencies; (b) jealousy of church representatives; (c) duplication of work; (d) organizations without plans; (e) promises, especially of farm bureaus, not fulfilled; (f) leaders lack knowledge of general principles.

The study, which checks activities against advertising, should prove suggestive for further detailed studies.

BRUCE L. MELVIN

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

The Problem of Immortality. By R. A. TSANOFF, Professor of Philosophy, Rice Institute, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1924. Pp. viii+418. $3.00.

Things and Ideals. By M. C. OTTO, Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1924. Pp. xi+320. $2.50.

Here are two books thoroughly worth reading-both dealing with the idealistic interpretation of life from much the same point of view. Both root their confidence in a world which justifies man in a life-long personal venture, in the part which ideals, personal and cosmic, play in girding man for the task.

Professor Tsanoff deals with the problem of immortality. He says: "The guiding idea in our whole inquiry is not so much to ascertain whether a particular kind of human destiny is fact or fancy, but rather to understand the significance of a man's claim to a specific destiny." After giving us a very interesting review of the ideas of immortality held by different men and groups in successive ages, he comes to a very significant final statement in a chapter entitled "Value, Personality, and Destiny." Here we have statements like the following:

The moral career of man, which most adequately expresses his character as a value and himself a system of values, exhibits man as working on the supposition that in the world spiritual aspiration is appropriate and significant. . . . The moral individual demands that the universe be conceived as one in which moral aspiration and spiritual activity in general are integral, and to this

end it also proposes hypotheses, it presents demands on the universe and seeks assurances of their justification. Such a hypothesis and such a demand is the belief in immortality, the hope of life eternal.

Otto says, "It is inevitable, therefore, that America, historically the foremost exponent of the democratic 'urge' and 'outreach' of the universe, and only yesterday the leader in making the world safe for democracy, shall presently engage in the larger task of making God safe for democracy. This is the heart of the new theology." Thus both men, starting from what is valid in the experience of men, work out to what that experience demands for its fulfilment in cosmic terms on the basic assumption that the universe justifies a personal venture on the part of man. Of course man cannot prove his basic assumptions except through acting upon them—this is the only way to prove any hypothesis; but when the action justifies the hypothesis it is proved that it is worth acting upon. And what other proof is needed?

A. E. HOLT

CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Behind and Before. By W. E. HEITLAND. Cambridge: The University Press, 1924. Pp. xv+166. 6s.

The Trend of History. BY WILLIAM KAY WALLACE. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1922. Pp. xi+372. $3.50.

Professor Heitland essays the part of Janus. With one face toward the past, he confronts the question of whether (and what sort of) history can help the practical statesman. He answers yes, recent history properly analyzed and taught to an orientated mind, shaped for leadership, can function as practical politics. With his other face turned toward the future he tackles the biological pessimist or eugenist, recognizes the degenerative influences at work, argues for improved living conditions, finds that permanent specialization of classes has never succeeded, and depends finally upon emotional influences chiefly religious to overcome the evil prognosticated. His conclusions somewhat resemble Kidd's (which, however, he accepts only with ample reservations). The author applies happily his own theory of the value of history to derive lessons from the tragic laissez-faire policy of the last century. He displays an unusual familiarity with American social science and its problems. For theoretical sociology the appendix on "Body Politic and Body Natural" is particularly interesting. The frank sizing up of our Madison Grants and

Stoddards establishes the author's critical acumen. His observations on history teaching can be followed with profit by every teaching sociologist.

The Trend of History also seeks the essence of history and its practical availability to trace out the nature and origins of twentieth-century problems. Its author would agree with Professor Heitland that mere political history is insufficient, and that on the whole only recent history has practical meaning. Even with these restrictions he would reject it as an infallible vade mecum to the statesman. To the sociologist his chief appeal lies in his approach to history from the institutional and "organic," rather than the individual or national, standpoint, and in his theory of social fermentation through putrefaction of ideas and institutions. ARTHUR J. TODD

CHICAGO

Security against War. BY FRANCES KELLOR. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1924. 2 Vols. Pp. ix+851. $6.00.

Scholars are not unaccustomed to recording negative results even after long and laborious researches; but seldom has it been the reviewer's fortune to work through such a mass as these nine hundred pages to so little purpose. With all the paraphernalia of research apparent and with every evidence of having had access to a wealth of materials, there runs throughout the fabric a suspicious thread of bias. Indeed the whole work sounds like a Lodge report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In the process, the poor old League of Nations is beaten black and blue; the Council machinery is declared unsound; the ambassadors, and not the League, the real power; the League, weak though autocratic, nothing but a glorified stretcher-bearer; no justice even when peaceable settlements are arrived at; the League Court unable to prevent wars; the fires of national egotism still leap high; small states have no rights; internationalism is weak in the face of Great Powers. The Saar Basin, Danzig, Albania, Fiume, and a score of other situations are analyzed in such a way as to belittle the League. It would seem that only on two points, the abhorrence of war and the substitution of law for force, are Europe and America in agreement. But in so far as methods are concerned, the author draws again the familiar picture of America contra mundum. America should not join the League, for that would be to entangle us in subversion of democracy. Instead, we must call a third Hague conference, codify international law, outlaw war according to the Levinson plan, and by all means scrap the League Council as a tribunal and replace it with the Hague Court. The mountain in labor finally

brings forth a mouse! For these conclusions sound rather thin and naïve after such a ponderous array of research activities. More than that, they are belated and destructive and scarcely warrant the optimistic title, Security Against War.

CHICAGO

ARTHUR J. TODD

Public Ownership. A Survey of Public Enterprises, Municipal, State, and Federal, in the United States and Elsewhere. By CARL D. THOMPSON, secretary of the Public Ownership League of America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1925. Pp. xviii+445. $3.00. Popular Ownership of Property: Its Newer Forms and Social Consequences. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, Vol. XI, No. 3, April, 1925. Edited by WILLIAM L. RANSOM AND PARKER THOMAS MOON. New York: The Academy of Political Science, Columbia University, 116th St. and Broadway. Pp. xix+198.

Mr. Thompson's book is mainly composed of facts. It should be of constant use for reference by everyone who is helping to shape programs that involve choice between public and private ownership. The circumstance that the book is sanctioned by The Public Ownership League detracts nothing from its value. In any case, if action depended upon the experience cited it would be necessary to verify the evidence. The work is consistent with the opening paragraph of the Introduction:

It is not the purpose of this volume to propound or to define any theory with reference to public ownership. The purpose is, rather, to present the facts with regard to the various phases of public ownership and enterprise. We are not concerned to argue for the public ownership of this or that public utility or against it. Our chief purpose here is to record the fact that this or that utility is publicly owned; and to give the results of such ownership so far as they can be learned.

Under twenty subtitles the last chapter in the book deals with "Objections to Public Ownership." This discussion is not an exception to the rule that the book is an exhibit of facts. These objections are actual, and it is a service to both sides of the public ownership problem to schedule the reasons that have been urged against the device.

The program of the Acedemy was based on recognition, or at least assumption that "a democratic trend in proprietorship" was in force,