tical questions or questions of commercial policy. Such information will be furnished free or, if the executive committee so directs, at cost. The Institut is to be conducted by an administrative council, under the supervision of a Conseil Protecteur, four-fifths of whose members must be Dutch subjects. For the present the president of the foundation is Dr. Loudon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, while the president of the Conseil Protecteur is Dr. van Karnebeek, Minister of State.

The word intermédiaire is intended to denote that the purpose of the foundation is to serve as a link between those who desire to increase their knowledge of the institutions and conditions of countries other than their own. A person in China wishes to learn some detail concerning Spain; a person in England wants information about Russia, or in Chile about Belgium, or in Germany about Peru, and so on the Institut offers itself as an intermediary.

The first place in the present bulletin is given to a collection of documents designed to show the "genesis of the peace". These documents embrace President Wilson's Fourteen Points of January 11, his four points of February 12 and his speech of September 27, 1918; the Vienna note of September 14, 1918; Mr. Balfour's London speech; the various armistices; and other papers, covering altogether pages 25-104 of the bulletin. In some instances the date given is that of the journal from which the text is taken and not that of the utterance itself, while the language also is perhaps that of the journal and not that of the speaker or writer. The rule on these points is not uniform. From the scientific point of view the original text should be given as far as possible. Probably stricter attention will be paid to this in future issues.

The next seventy-five pages are devoted to private internationa law or, as it is commonly called in English-speaking countries, the "conflict of laws". Then follow papers relating to double taxation (pages 178-196), international contractual relations (200-232), Zionism (233-245) and the war (246-258). In conclusion there are answers to questions (259-272). The questions relate chiefly to points of law. Experience no doubt will lead to the conclusion, which many of the present responses would seem to foreshadow, that, so far as such inquiries seek to elicit opinions, the attempt to answer them is more difficult than it is useful.

The object of the new foundation is altogether praiseworthy, and its success will depend not only upon the intelligence and fidelity of those by whom its work is carried on but also upon their possession of ade

quate resources to enable them to obtain the materials which they need. The gathering of authentic documentary materials is not an easy matter, nor is it inexpensive. It requires organization and constant watchfulness. The mere republication, in collected form, of materials, documentary or otherwise, gleaned from newspapers and periodicals, while it might be useful as grist for journalists, would not meet the requirements of scientific inquirers.

J. B. MOORE.

Effects of the War upon Insurance, with Special Reference to the Substitution of Insurance for Pensions. By WILLIAM F. GEPHART. New York, Oxford University Press, 1918.-vi, 302 pp.

Professor Gephart's contribution to the Preliminary Economic Studies of the War, edited by Professor David Kinley for the Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is a compilation of quotations, forms and figures, with certain incidental remarks, rather than a study. It was impossible at the time it was prepared, December 1, 1917, to write anything approaching a complete study, since only data from the early period of the war were available. It will, therefore, be found that the original portion of the text discusses in a very general way the actual and possible effects of the war on insurance. The quotations, largely from The Economic World, furnish a considerable body of interesting material on the results of the war, but leave one with an impression of indefiniteness and the feeling that many of them might better have been relegated to the appendices, leaving the author free to develop his subject in a compact, logical and more completely original statement. At almost no point in the book has the author attempted to make statistical studies of his own. Statistics there are in profusion, but practically all of them are contained in the quotations, so that they do not contribute so directly or so concisely to the discussion as might be wished.

As an example of the inadequacy of certain quotations, that from a "Memorandum . . . on the Law of Trading with Enemy" given on pages 25 and following may be taken. This memorandum begins with three headings containing statements of points of law governing trading with the enemy, supported by citations and excerpts from judicial opin

Further headings contain only the subjects treated in the excerpts or citations to which they refer, while on several subjects for which citations alone are given it would be necessary to go to the original opinions in order to learn what decisions had been rendered. Here, as in many other places, a simple, clear statement of the prin

Source

cipal points involved would have better served the purpose. material has been used in the body of the text to such an extent as to render the work cumbersome and confusing.

Exception must be taken to the unqualified statements (page 6): "Insurance does not replace nor produce either tangible or intangible capital. It simply distributes what is already in existence." "Insurance itself is an economic and social burden." Willett in his Economic Theory of Risk and Insurance has analyzed the relation of insurance to economic life and has explained in illuminating fashion why it should be considered under the head of production. That analysis is hardly adequate which considers only the function of insurance in the distribution of loss and which fails to consider the effect of this distribution on the elimination of risk and the consequent increased production. Professor Gephart has adopted the less adequate analysis although he recognizes insurance as "a constructive agency."

Throughout the book there is evidence of haste and inadequate revision. For example, the Wisconsin state life-insurance venture is used as an instance of public insurance in the United States (page 44), no mention being made of the more numerous and more successful workmen's compensation insurance funds. Reference is made (page 59) to three classes of policy holders, only two of which are described. On pages 61 and following figures are given as the work of "the committee "; of what committee is not explained. On page 111 reference is made to the "American Actuarial Society" instead of the Actuarial Society of America.

On page 103 the "writing down of the security values which has been in progress in some companies and the resulting increase in interest return, as well as the possibility of a future increase in the actual value of these depreciated securities ", are listed among the favorable influences of war on the finances of life-insurance companies. The reductio ad adsurdum method might well be applied to this sort of reasoning, especially since the author lists under unfavorable influences "the heavy depreciation of securities ".

This work finds its value as a collection of source material, figures, opinions and references. It is both informing and suggestive, and it is to be hoped that a study covering completely the effects of the war on insurance will be issued as soon as practicable. The present volume would be a valuable aid in such a study and points the way to its development.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

RALPH H. BLANCHARD.

BOOK NOTES

We have been led to expect contributions to knowledge rather than compendiums of knowledge in British governmental reports. The one in hand, Report of an Inquiry as to Works Committees Made by the British Ministry of Labor (Reprinted by Industrial Relations Division, United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, Philadelphia, 1919; 131 pp.) is no exception to the rule. It is a study of existing types of representative machinery within the local shop. The application of the representative idea to industry is receiving wide attention today; and the effort in this report is to examine the organizations that are at the base of the hierarchy-the works committees. Beyond emphasizing the necessity for a maximum devolution in industrial organization and for getting the local representation as accurate and direct as possible, the study raises more questions than it settles. This is inevitable because of the newness of the experiment in machinery which is representative of an entire "works" or factory. The distinction must be kept in view between the long-standing shop committees, chapels and shop stewards of the unions and the works committee which aims to be representative of all the departments of a plant. There is need of an organization which will supplement the craft bodies and speak for all the workers on matters of their common interest. Such questions as how the delegates shall be chosen, how large the committee shall be, how many workers shall be brought into a voting unit and given a representative, have only to be put for one to see that we are at the threshold of an era of experimentation in constitutional government in industry which promises to be as variegated and valuable as our experimentation in political forms. This report throws important light on certain of these questions. It is a needed addition to the library of experience in methods of getting the democratic idea acted upon. It forms an interesting companion volume to the study by Mr. A. B. Wolfe, entitled Works Committees and Joint Industrial Councils, which is concerned more especially with American plans. The Industrial Relations Division of the Emergency Fleet Corporation has performed a public service in making both of these studies available in pamphlet form for American readers.

In the effort to develop better relations between employers and employees several of the labor-adjustment boards established by the

government during the war included in their awards the creation of shop committees. The Shop Committee: A Handbook for Employer and Employee (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1919; iv, 105 pp.) by William Leavitt Stoddard is an interesting discussion of the shop committees established by the National War Labor Board, for which he was an administrator. In addition to describing at length several different plans of shop-committee organization, he devotes special chapters to "Election Machinery ", " Procedure " and "Shop Committees in Action" and concludes with a discussion of the vexed question of "The Shop Committee and the Union". He recognizes clearly the antagonism between the local self-government of shop committees and the central government of American trade unions as thus far developed but believes a reconciliation and fusion of the two movements to be not only possible but inevitable. For, as he says in conclusion, "The Shop Committee . . . is not a device of capital to prevent unionism: its seeds lie deep in the soil of unionism, so deep that unionism of employees alone cannot cause them to grow and flourish. The shop committee has in it the germ of the hope of the future of industrial peace and the cooperative commonwealth."

Cooperation: The Hope of the Consumer (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1918; xxii, 328 pp.) by Emerson P. Harris is a timely discussion of one way of grappling with the high-cost-of-living problem that is receiving all too little attention in the United States. As President of the Montclair Cooperative Society the author writes with full knowledge of the difficulties to be overcome as well as of the benefits to be enjoyed. After considering in Parts I and II "The Failure of Our Middlemanism" and "Reasons and the Remedy", he discusses in Part III the means to "Practical Cooperation" and concludes in Part IV and the appendices with a history of cooperative efforts in Europe and America. The greatest merits of the book are its convincing exposure of the demoralizing results of our present distributive system and its inspiring portrayal of the moral gains to be secured by substituting distribution through cooperating consumers. Mere desire to reduce expenses will not, he thinks, long hold together an American group of cooperators. The temptations of the bargain-counter are too omnipresent and too alluring. To succeed, an American group of cooperators must deliberately choose cooperation because it is the better as well as the cheaper way. Because of its interesting style, its skilful handling of information and its happy blending of idealism and common sense, the