The function of the scholar amidst present circumstances is clear. He will give what he can for the winning of the war, but his chief business is the winning of the peace. He will work indefatigably toward the understanding of the realities of human life, and the conditions under which human life may be led sweetly, richly, and cooperatively. He will stand, unabashed, for the principle that the rules of civilization wrought out on Sinai and the Areopagus, by Jesus and Socrates, by the Stoics and the Epicurians, are prior to the bomber and the poison gas, and will survive beyond them. The scholar will wake up, as the shock of war becomes incorporated into the standard of living, and assert, humbly and boldly: I will persist in scholarship as usual.
In view of the scarcity of labor and material in the Reich, industrial mass production appears as the most economic method for Germany even for civilian goods. For this reason the German plan of economic mobilization originally provided for the most far reaching concentration of industrial production and for the wholesale closing down of small industrial enterprises. The unexpected course of the war until the Spring of 1941 made it possible to discard such radical measures: the short intervals of Blitzkrieg followed by long months of military inactivity consumed much less material and manpower than had been expected. Although a general closing down could be avoided under these conditions, nevertheless it was the small enterprises which suffered most under the war economy. Not only were they threatened by the drafting of their owners for military service, but they also had to reduce output and often to shut down voluntarily because they could no longer procure material and labor.
Every portion of the mysterious thing physicists call matter is surrounded by a field of force--in classical physics matter itself is a field of force. I dare say every human being is surrounded by a mental field, which is a field of force. In mental contact with any other person you enter a vectorial field, which demands a certain behavior: you respond unconsciously by a certain "adjustment" to the human style of that person. You change your manners slightly, you lower your voice. Or you do not, and so you must make an effort to resist.
Russia’s industrial development at the beginning of this century created a demand for women workers. In the years preceding the first World War employment of women in manufacturing industries was rising considerably, and the Factory Inspection reported even replacement of male by female workers. By 1913 female wage-earners in large industry numbered 636,000, or 24.5 percent of all wage-earners. Two out of three women workers were employed in the textile and clothing industries, in which they actually outnumbered male workers. Thus in the early stage of Russia’s industrialization the proportion of women workers proved similar to that in far more industrialized countries, such as the United States and Germany. Russia’s experience before the first World War confirmed the well known fact that industrialization creates a demand for female labor and thus dissolves the economic unit of the home by forcing women to work outside the home to help support the family.
If read in the light of subsequent experience, it can be easily seen that what the propaganda instructions describe as a plan has been executed on an enlarged scale. It seems hardly necessary to quote detailed evidence: the literature on Nazi infiltration into Latin America is steadily growing, and especially since the French surrender the media of mass communication in the United States report almost weekly on facts which could have been anticipated by a study of the Instructions. The present picture, however, is infinitely more complex than that drawn in 1933. In some of the Latin American countries, especially in Mexico and Brazil, a newspaper war is being waged between pro-Axis and pro-democratic papers; and gradually the secrecy of Nazi action is becoming open pressure.
A careful analysis of the military virtues as praised by the Nazis will clarify the specific character of their military spirit. The continuous emphasis on discipline, obedience, sacrifice and loyalty as fundamental virtues of the military corporation that is called the Nazi party is the clearest evidence of the confusing ambivalence of these terms. All these qualities are not in themselves moral requirements. They may apply to the conduct of a gang of outlaws as well as to an army of soldiers. The efficiency of every violent action depends absolutely on centralized command and strict execution.
We shall show that the struggle and rivalry between religion and magic was an essential factor in the complexity of primitive society: in conflicts between clan and fraternal associations; in the differentiation between contractual law and property law, and between movable property and real estate; in the struggle between the morality of taboos and the morality of revolt; and finally, in conflicts between transcendence and immanence, whose principles originate sociologically in the antimony between religion and magic. This antimony in primitive mentality has never been appreciated at its just value, for just those scientists who contributed most to the concentration of attention on magic and its social repercussions have immediately weakened if not destroyed the most valuable results of their findings.
Not even the bottlenecks constitute a finality from which there is no escape. On the contrary, they imply a command to everyone concerned to overcome them. And they can be overcome by methods regularly employed in practical life, by transferring or retraining men, by substituting available for scarce materials, by changing methods or products of manufacture. This holds true for any peace economy. It holds all the more true for a war economy which, while necessarily multiplying the bottlenecks because of the increased particular demand for particular factors, also makes the command to overcome them the more imperative.
New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. 1941. 298 pp.
New York: Ronald Press. 1940. 582 pp.
New York: Ronald Press. 1940. 447 pp.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1940. ix and 162 pp.
Review of book by F.J.C. Hearnshaw. London: W. and R. Chambers. 1940. 288 pp.
Review of book by J.E. Marcault and Therese Brosse. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1939. 305 pp.
Review of book by Cromwell A. Riches. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. 1940. 322 pp.