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NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 25, No. 4 (Winter 1958)


In 1958 as in 1799 Frenchmen were asking: what is in the constitution that we have been asked to approve in the plebiscite? The patent analogy of the answer--Bonaparte and de Gaulle--is as deceptive as it is clear.

Economists have given considerable attention to the balance-of-payments problems likely to face member countries of a European Common Market or free-trade area. A few have even recommended flexible exchange rates to deal with the problem. Yet little or no recognition has been given to one considerable advantage that flexible exchange rates would have over reliance on rival methods of balance-of-payments adjustment. The present paper seeks to explain how exchange-rate flexibility would help compensate for 'stickiness' of wages and prices. By promoting what would partially deputize for competitive price flexibility, flexible exchanges would increase the effectiveness of the price mechanism, and thus contribute to economic integration.

If the present crisis between East and West were a simple clash either of military systems or of political ideologies, we would doubtless face the future with greater confidence and hope. Honest men admit, however, that most of us vacillate between a military and an ideological view of the struggle. The problem of arriving at valid and acceptable policies is at root the problem of defining the nature of the crisis. The uncertainty we feel about policies is basically an uncertainty over the crisis.

Since observation of the recurrence is the first reason that Bacon gives for the failure of hope, and since the failure of hope is 'by far the greatest obstacle' to progress in science, the denial and, indeed, the effective denial of the eternal recurrence must be essential to Baconian thought. It is true that Christianity had long before denied and claimed to refute the classical recurrence, for the Christian view of salvation holds to a kind of progress--"the advance," as Karl Lowith says, "toward an ever sharper distinction between faith and unbelief, Christ and Antichrist."

John Collier was the New Deal Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He was the first of the government's agents, whether exploitative political appointees or conscience-stricken Americans faithful to the American Idea, who dealt with the Indians on the principle that the Indians have the right to be Indian; that to be Indian is to be a member of a community fully and freely maintaining, diversifying, and strengthening a way of life, a culture, and a form of personality by which a human being identifies himself as Indian; that he does so as an equal partner in the making of the free society which, we like to believe, the American people are struggling to keep going and develop.

Review of book by Geoffrey L. Goodwin. National Studies on International Organization: Prepared for the Royal International Peace.New York: Manhattan Publishing Co. 1957. 478 pp.

Review of book by Hans Kohn. New and enlarged ed. New York: Macmillan. 1957. 300 pp.

Review of book by Arthur J. Vidich and Joseph Bensman. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1957. 392 pp.

Review of book by Mark Perlman. Evanston, Illinois: Row, Peterson. 1958. 313 pp.

Review of book by Maurice Natanson with introduction by Horace M. Kallen. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press.1956. 102 pp.

Review of book by Aron Gurwitsch. Burges: Desclee de brouwer. 1957. 347 pp.

Review of book by Morroe Berger. Princeton Oriental Studies: Social Science, No. 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1957. 231 pp.

Review of book by Cheng Yu-Kwei. Washington, DC: University Press of Washington. 1956. 278 pp.

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