As one advances in life, says Pliny the Younger, the most tragic experience is to see one’s friends go one by one to the grace. A week ago Max Wertheimer was alive and buoyant. Today we bow to his memory.
In discussing the term "unconditional surrender," one must realize that its meaning is limited. It is addressed primarily to those responsible for the present war and its form. But if they should surrender, they cannot do so for themselves alone; they will have to surrender their peoples with them. Unconditional surrender is a military rather than a political term. It implies that later terms can be imposed without negotiation--in other words, that the unavoidable conditions of unconditional surrender are for the victor to dictate.
The United Nations and Pan-Americanism are much discussed at present. Many people are inclined to look upon their present organizational set-up as separate patterns or nuclei of future world organization. In interrelationship of these two power-groups, however, has apparently been neglected, and since more than one third of the United Nations -- thirteen out of thirty-three--also belong to the inter-American system, a comparison of the two international organizations suggests itself.
For generations economists have been endeavoring to discover laws which determine the distribution of income among the factors of production. Statisticians of various countries have now obtained enough factual information to indicate the share of capital returns, entrepreneurial earnings and compensation for labor in national income, thus bringing to light some of the fundamental characteristics of a nation’s economy and also of its social structure. An international comparison, of course, would reveal traits which are common to the different nations as well as those which are unique to the specific economies.
At a time when, not only in Germany but all over Europe, the champions of democracy had become skeptical and lukewarm, the almost puritanical severity of Feiler’s position was unique. Democracy was intrinsically right, and hence its fulfillment became the moral duty of all free and moral human beings. It followed that Feiler had little use for the pragmatic defense of democracy which became so fashionable in the postwar era. For instance, Max Weber’s justification of democracy as the most effective way of selecting political leaders was repugnant to him, despite the fact that he greatly admired Weber as a man, a political leader, and a fellow democrat.
There are five criteria by which to judge whether a period of economic demobilization has been completed: the end of war controls; the reconversion of production to a peace basis; the final demobilization of the armed forces; the reabsorption of the labor supply in peace production; and the return of prices to a normal, stable level. All but the last of these transitions from a war economy to a peace economy were achieved very rapidly in the United States after the end of World War I.
Since the attack on Pearl Harbor the American public has become increasingly aware of the nature of the Japanese ruling cliques, which Veblen in 1917, on the occasion of Japan’s entry into that war against Germany, characterized as the "shrewdest, most callous, and most watchful of all adepts in unashamed statecraft." And in other respects as well, one is impressed today, in reading Veblen’s comments on Japan, by the keenness of his insights and the accuracy of his prophecies.
Review of book by R. M. Maciver. New York: Macmillan. 1943. 195 pp.
Review of book by Yves Simon. New York: Sheed and Ward. 1942. 207 pp.
Review of book by Francis Deak. New York: Columbia University Press. 1942. xxiii and 624 pp.
Review of book by Arthur P. Whitaker. Annual Survey, No. 1.] New York: Columbia University Press. 1942. 230 pp., index 10 pp.
Review of book by George Katona. New York: Columbia University Press. 1942. 207 pp.
Review of book by Adolf Sturmthal. New York: Columbia University Press. 1943. 389 pp.
Review of book by John H. Dewey. Revised Edition. New York: Putnam. 1942. 145 pp.
Review of a book by Humphry Trevelyan. Cambridge: University Press. New York: Macmillan. 1942. 287 pp.
Review of book by Ernst Knapp. New York: Columbia University Press. 1942. 87 pp., index 5 pp.
New York: Columbia University Press. 1942. 234 pp.
Review of book by Sir James Jeans. New York: Macmillan. 1943. 222 pp.
Review of book by Gunnar Dahlberg. Translated from the Swedish by Lancelot Hogben. New York: Columbia University Press. 1942. 240 pp.
Review of book by Leo W. Simmons. Published for the Institute of Human Relations.] New Haven: Yale University Press. 1942. 397 pp., appendices 56 pp.
Review of book by Robert J. Kerner. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1942. 190 pp., index 22 pp.