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BRIEFER MENTION
The Psychology of Nationality and Internationalism, by W. B. Pillsbury (12mo, 314 pages; Appleton), is not the book political scientists, sociologists, and statesmen have been eagerly hoping for. There is still too great a hiatus between the author's picture of the animal pack, encircled for defence, and that complex of traditions, conventions, memories, institutions, slogans, boundaries, and tomtom beats which has brought us finally to the conception of a nation in arms. Professor Pillsbury has not clarified, for example, the relations of nation and state. His belief in the integrity of the national state does not take into account that growing regionalism which challenges the authority of the state at the same time that it denies the false unity of belligerent nationalism. And the temperate lucidity of the author's psychological exposition does not equate his superficial examination of the historical groundwork of Nationality and Internationalism.
The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice, by Stephen Leacock (12mo, 152. pages; Lane), is a readable and frequently keen analysis of industrial society. Professor Leacock's delicately manipulated scalpel cuts perilously close to the heart of the Price System, in his perception of the paradox of value—namely, that "the world's production is aimed at producing 'values,' not in producing plenty." While the honest sunlight of criticism declares the insufficiency of individualist economics, the light that Professor Leacock throws upon Socialism—taking Bellamy's bleak vision of bureaucracy as sample—is almost a Moonbeam from the Larger Lunacy.
Stabilizing the Dollar: A Plan to-Stabilize the General Price Level Without Fixing Individual Prices, by Irving Fisher (8vo, 305 pages; Macmillan), sums up the author's plea for a "goods" dollar based upon the price index of commodities, in place of a "metals" dollar fluctuating with the supply of bullion. The plan is presented with elaborate simplicity and persuasiveness, and an exhaustive discussion of technical details, alternative plans, and precedents clears the way for a critical decision on Professor Fisher's proposal.
