NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer 1946)
- Social Research An Int'l Quarterly
- Jul 1, 1946
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 22, 2023
It is a fixed point in United Nations policy that Germany shall not again be in a position to launch a ruthless attack against her neighbors. Therefore her war potential is to be destroyed, or more accurately, reduced to such terms that not even the wildest of the unreconstructed Nazis—of which there are millions—can dream of a renewal of the process of German aggression. The problem of Allied policy is thus to determine as nearly as may be the limits beyond which a war potential becomes dangerous. Allied policy must also recognize another problem, that of a people become so desperate under hopeless poverty that civil order is impossible.
Unless the Big Three—the United States, Russia and Britain—can agree how the peace is to be organized, there will be no peace. During the war there was a substantial agreement among the Three. At the Moscow meeting of Foreign Ministers in 1943, and later at Tehran, Dumbarton Oaks, Yalta, San Francisco and Potsdam, the three were in accord as to the conduct of the war and the organization of the peace to come. And since they possessed the dominant industrial and military power of the world, they and they alone made all decisions relating to the war and dominated the arrangements for the organization of peace
The problem of whether it is possible for science, and if so, how, to do more than the higher-level relativists concede could be done, has hardly been broached systematically in non-religious political theory Most contemporary theorists prefer to dispose of these problems, if they bother to consider them at all, with a few general remarks or with skeptical references to surviving ideas of natural law. In the histories of political philosophy written in the United States—and so admirably written as a whole—one looks in vain for discussions of relativism and of the arguments of the higher-level relativists. As a result, when the Hitler menace swept the world, secular political theory offered no comfort in answer to the question whether Hitlerism was just another political alternative or whether it was basically wrong and evil.
In the late Lord Keynes of Tilton, or John Maynard Keynes as he was better known to the scientific and political world, there were merged to a unique extent the abilities of a brilliant writer and of a penetrating economic analyst. Neither of the two gifts, however, was utilized to form the basis of a professional career. The driving force in Keynes’ life was a desire to influence the economic policy of his country, and both his economic erudition and his literary gifts were made to serve this goal. It was only his realization of the inadequacy of the existing conceptual apparatus of momentary theory which eventually induced him to apply his analytical talents.
Julius Ebbinghaus (Translated by H. M Kallen)
Now, in the very place where we held celebrations during which we so often head sickness swell into cries of "Heil!," we at last speak freely words that make us free. But no note of exultation sounds in our speech, so unimaginable are the horrors of soul and body through which we have passed. Upon our spirits lies the weight of all those dead who were the sacrifice to this most murderous of all wars, whatever they had vowed their lives to—duty, madness or freedom. Let that which impelled these dead be what it may, the judgment of reason dies on our lips when we look upon the gates before which all must tremble.
Review of book by J. R. Hicks and Albert Gailord Hart. New York: Oxford University Press. 1945. 261 pp.
Review of book by George Katona.Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, Monograph No. 9. Bloomington: Principia Press. 1945. 246 pp.
Review of book by Calvin B. Hoover. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1945. 177 pp.
Review of book by Van Dusen Kennedy. New York: Columbia University Press. 1945. 260 pp.
Review of L'Oveuvre de la Teroisième République. Collection "France Forever," under the direction of Henri Laugier. Montreal: Les Editions de L'Arbre. 1945. 318 pp.
Review of book by Harold D. Smith. Forward by Eric Johnston.] New York; McGraw-Hill. 1945. 179 pp.
Review of book by Heinrich A. Rommen. St. Louis: B. Herder. 1945. 747 pp.
Review of book by James West. New York: Columbia University Press. 1945. 238 pp.
Review of book by Leo W. Simmons. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1945. 317 pp.
Review of book by the Indian Science Congress Association. Ed. By J. P. Mills, B. S. Guha, K. P. Chattopadhayay,D. N. Majumdar, A. Aiyappan. Lucknow, India: Maxwell. 257 pp.
Review of book by Ernst Cassirer. Högskolas Arsskrift, XLVIII, 1942:1.] Göteborg. 1942. 139 pp.
Review of book by Anton C. Pegis ed. Annotated , with an introduction by the editor. New York: Random House. 1945. 2 vols.: vol 1, 1097 pp., vol 2. 1179 pp.