Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/263

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
REVIEWS
251

gamut of praise and censure. Because of the particular public addressed, the criticisms are more carefully subdued, and the praises more strongly accentuated, than would be possible in an estimate of America by Americans for Americans.

Finally, such a book must necessarily contain a large element of the individual judgment of the author about open questions. There are hundreds of opinions, expressed or implied, in the work, with any one of which hundreds of Americans might take issue. If this were not the case, the book might better not have been written. It is a distinct public service for a man with Professor Münsterberg's outlook to utter his opinions on public questions. He is not bound to be infallible. It is enough if he is sincere. It is the reader's business to give the opinions their relative weight among all the considerations that he can control. The fact that the opinions in this instance are expressed in terms of direct or indirect comparison with German conditions gives them no finality, of course, but it throws the subject-matter into wider perspective, and often has the effect of broadening the basis of induction. In some respects the most conspicuous case of this type is the treatment of the Monroe Doctrine (I, 49 and 322 ff.):

The Monroe Doctrine must fall, but it must fall through the will of the American people ... The hour appears near, since the injustice and the perversity of the doctrine are already suspected in wide circles. Opposition to it is brilliantly represented, and if a reaction once sets in among the American people, it usually spreads with irrepressible rapidity (I, 323).

Although I am more nearly in agreement with Professor Münsterberg's appraisal of the Monroe Doctrine, considered as a purely academic question, than with traditional American opinion on the subject, I should be surprised to learn that the "wide circles" referred to include more than two or three Americans in a million. It may be that Americans will some day take the view that the author outlines, and it may be that the day is near; but whatever we may think ought to be the course of events, there are no more signs, as political signs go, that such a change of heart is near at hand, than there are that America, England, and Germany are about to form an offensive and defensive alliance to compel arbitration of international disputes. Very nearly the same thing is to be said of the confident prediction that the western portions of British North America will soon be absorbed by the United States (I, 315 ff.). I have never happened to make the personal acquaintance of an American who seriously