lic opinion difficult or does it arise from our undeveloped capacity for cooperative activity? Miss Follett neither puts nor answers this question as such. But through her entire discourse she certainly rates both our capacity and our desire for cooperation far above anything that is warranted by the facts of our life. Her major premise with respect to the group rests upon the assumption that every individual has a positive opinion, no matter how acquired, on every public question. Otherwise how can 66 every member" make his "full contribution" to the cause of interpenetration. A further assumption is that, being possessed of opinion, every individual is obsessed with longing to substitute for it the opinion which one of his groups has formed by the process of interpenetration. Now the fact seems to be that even on important public questions absence of positive opinion, amounting to total ignorance or complete indifference or settled indetermination, is as often the rule as the exception. And the further fact is that those who have positive opinions are commonly those who are most willing to penetrate but least willing to be penetrated. The difficulties of the group process" that arise from these facts concerning individuals do not differ in kind from those that are encountered when we consider the process of the interpenetration of groups. And this is not to mention the mental state of the poor fellow who finds that, try as he may, the mind of one of his groups (which is also his own) will not flow into and integrate with the mind of another (which is also his own). No doubt one may be pardoned, too, for cherishing a high regard for the unhappy order that is, when he contemplates possible membership in numerous groups in which each of his fellow members feels a compelling urge to make his "full contribution" to the collective mind, or for resenting an apotheosis of the group idea which apparently goes to the length of advocating group punishment for individual offenses. If this is, as Miss Follett alleges (page 109), a disciplinary practice of the American army, surely the Germans have but to prove the acts of franc tireurs in Belgium in order to justify collective punishments which most of us regard as atrocities.

One is strongly tempted to isolate some of Miss Follett's passages and hold them up at least for gentle banter, but the author's purpose is too manifestly sincere and intense to permit of that. Her discourse throbs with passionate conviction. At times it almost sounds a note of religious ecstacy. And yet one somehow gathers the impression that Miss Follett conceives that she is offering an immediately practical solution for a practical problem. Her notion of practicalness may perhaps be measured by her praise for Borough President Marks's

abortive plan of neighborhood commissions, the inanition of which "does not . . . detract from the value of the plan as a suggestion " (page 255, n.).

Miss Follett knows her Hegel, her Duguit, her James, her Roscoe Pound, her Harold Laski. She knows her particularism, her syndicalism, her guild socialism, her dualism, her pluralism. But she does not know human nature at its present stage of progress toward cooperation. She is not a practicalist.

The neighborhood center, however, is a very practical and very useful institution.

HOWARD LEE MCBAIN.

Federal Power: Its Growth and Necessity. By HENRY LITCHFIELD WEST. New York, George H. Doran Company, 1918.216 pp.

Mr. West writes readily, often jauntily, sometimes flamboyantly; and he eschews footnotes. Necessarily, therefore, his book fails to measure up to the standard of what reviewers call "scientific." But his offense in making constitutional law palatable to lay readers must be deemed a misdemeanor only and not a crime. A clement judge would not inflict the extreme penalty of the most critical review that might be possible, nor would he decree that the book go entirely unnoticed. Though he would have to find the defendant guilty of the charge of being popular and unscientific, he would mingle praise with censure and suspend sentence.

On the credit side is the excellent summary of the extent to which the government at Washington has undertaken to order the affairs of the nation and of the approval which the Supreme Court has almost uniformly accorded to the exercise of federal power. The recital brings to light nothing previously hidden, nor does it add new interpretation; but by arrangement and emphasis the outlines of our growth towards centralization are brought out in clear relief, and the cumulative effect of the story adds something to what any other writer has given us. The logic of events is made to express itself in a fashion not to be neglected. The chapter on "Federal Power as a Political Issue" shows how futile has been 'the call to resist encroachment on the traditional sphere of state authority and to curb the propensity of federal power to grow by what it feeds on. This is summed up in the final chapter, as follows:

The truth is, however, that the American people, as a whole, have never

believed that the individuality of the states must be recognized as an essential factor in our national growth. This is demonstrated by the fact that in every contest between the so-called rights of the states and the exercise of federal power, the latter principle has prevailed. Today there is no longer any conflict. The tide is all running one way. It is impossible to overcome its tremendous force. The nation is being swept forward upon a tide of Federalism and the anxious fears occasionally uttered by a steadily decreasing minority are deafened by the roar of the torrent [pages 197198].

With the extension of this federal control the author is in evident sympathy. But he turns Jeremiah when he notes how much of this expanding authority is being exercised by the executive rather than by Congress. He abandons description for lamentation and exhortation when he passes from the Capitol to the White House. "If the states in our union are to drop to the plane of counties in England, or departments in France, or provinces in Canada-and already they are in this category-and we are still to preserve the democratization which has been our strength and our glory in the past, we must see to it that neither an oligarchy nor an autocracy takes the place of a republic" (page 205). The only way "in which we can avoid the peril that threatens . . . lies in the adoption of a system of parliamentary control, similar to that which gives to Great Britain, France and Canada a centralized or national government without the evils which even now are a part of our experience" (ibid.). Mr. West would emasculate the presidency by curtailing the power of appointment, by making cabinet members individually responsible to Congress and in other ways. His suggestions are familiar, and he gives no consideration to the difficulties that beset their adoption by reason of the differences between our traditions and institutions and those of other countries. Cabinet members are to have seats in both the Senate and the House and to be responsible to both. Instead of serving one master as now, Mr. West would have them serve three, in disregard not only of Holy Writ but of common sense as well.

The reader must be warned, too, against assuming that the states have been reduced to any such position as Mr. West implies, or that the notion of the rights of states is so moribund as he would have us think. Quite cavalierly the child labor decision is dismissed with. the comment that "there is no doubt that Congress will amend the act so as to overcome this adverse decision" (page 124). The case is not again mentioned, and the discussion proceeds as though it had never been decided. On the other hand, the author strangely neglects

the use of the federal taxing power to fill the dinner pails of American workmen and to protect dairy products from the too severe competition of oleaginous substitutes. Whether the suggested amendment of the child labor law is to take the form of an exercise of federal power is not stated. These omissions are the more striking because the author has included so much that is less obvious.

There is an inexcusable slip in the statement that "five of the nine Associate Justices now serving on the Supreme Court were appointed by President Taft" (page 164), when it is familiar knowledge that Justices Lurton and Lamar have died and that Mr. Justice Hughes has returned to the bar. The reference to the justices is made for the purpose of emphasizing the importance and the danger of the presidential power of appointment. Mr. West thinks that "it is safe to say that Mr. Taft was thoroughly conversant with the views held by each appointee upon constitutional and other questions before he submitted their names to the Senate, and that each of them reflected his own opinions" (page 164). He adds that "the same assertion applies to the appointment of Mr. Brandeis and Mr. Clarke by President Wilson," omitting, however, any reference to President Wilson's first appointment. The point thus emphasized by the faultless silence of the author finds its parallel in a similar contrast between the appointment of Marshall by President Adams and that of Story by President Madison. Undoubtedly presidents seek for judges of their own cast of thought; but undoubtedly, too, presidents have frequently been disappointed in the decisions of their appointees.

Judging Mr. West's contribution as a whole, it must be said that it lacks depth. As a surface study, however, it deserves not a little commendation. It places before the general reader in inviting form much that is given elsewhere only in works that he would find forbidding. Positive errors are rare, and the opinions that may be open to question are not likely to prove seriously misleading. To all who desire to know the development of federalism in the United States, the author has rendered a genuine service in presenting a technical subject in a book that is both readable and informing.

THOMAS REED POWELL.

The National Budget System. By CHARLES WALLACE COLLINS. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1917.-vii, 151 pp.

This little book makes no pretense, as the author states, to either originality or exhaustiveness. It is intended to present in brief com

pass, to the general reader, "what the budget system is, and why it is said to be needed for the United States." Since the book is so brief, it is a pity that so much of it is devoted to a description of variations in British, French, German, Swiss and Japanese practice which have no fundamental significance. Since it is intended for the general reader, it is a pity that it should mislead on several major points. Of these the most important is the power of the president to coordinate and unify the estimates submitted to Congress. In half a dozen places the author drives home the wholly erroneous idea that no such power exists. He manages to give a curiously incorrect picture also of the extent to which the several Congressional committees disregard the estimates and requests of the executive branch. In fact, animated by a wholly laudable propagandist purpose, Mr. Collins seems intent throughout on painting as black a picture as possible. Thus he recurs, in several places, to the fact that it is impossible to tell, in advance of complete action by Congress on all the appropriation bills, the exact amount of money which the government will need for the next fiscal year, but in doing so he gives the reader the impression that it is impossible to make even a reasonably approximate guess, which is of course all that is really necessary for the formulation of the revenue program.

While making reference to all the foreign systems above mentioned, Mr. Collins makes comparison chiefly with the British system. It is the more regrettable, therefore, that he lays no stress upon-indeed he mentions only by inference-the vital functions performed by the British Treasury in the administration of the budget, a factor in the success of the British system which has almost invariably been neglected in American discussion.

As a whole, the book suffers from the absence of a clear and systematic statement, in any one place, of the precise advantages and economies which may be expected to result from the adoption of a budget system by our government and from a failure to bring out clearly that our method of fiscal legislation is merely one phase, and a more or less natural result, of our entire system of division of legislative power between President, House and Senate.

As Mr. Collins says in his preface, there is need of a book of this size and scope on the budget problem. His execution of the project, however, leaves so much to be desired that an attempt by another hand would be welcome.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

LEWIS MAYERS.