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NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 10, No. 2 (Summer 1943)


Current proposals for postwar international organization can be grouped in four categories according to the extent of the organization they recommend. We may call them the proposals of universalists, major-regionalists, minor-regionalists, and ideological unionists. The universalists want a worldwide organization; the major-regionalists recommend federations of continental scope; the minor-regionalists propose federal groupings of smaller countries; and the ideological unionists advocate a federation of democracies or a continued league of the United Nations. It is foolish to contrast these ideas as if they were mutually exclusive. We need all four kinds of supra-national organizations, or at least we must leave room for all four.

Richard Schuller details the incredibly complex balance of tariff regulations, clearing practices, and other commercial policies between the United States and the European countries during the intermediary period between the two World Wars.

Since the Spring of 1942 German production has been systematically concentrated in the most efficient plants, mainly because of a shortage of manpower. At the same time the number of models of any one commodity manufactured has been drastically reduced by government order. Each company is limited to a few models, or even to one, which it must produce in large numbers. Smaller concerns, unable to introduce mass production, have to a considerable extent been closed down. As we shall see, these developments are but the climax of a trend that became visible after the National Socialist party took power in Germany.

According to Goebbels, "[g]ood propaganda need not lie, in fact, must not lie. Propaganda which makes use of the lie... Cannot have success in the long run." In other words, the secret of propaganda is to tell the truth in the appropriate form. Puzzling as it is, such an assertion can hardly be dismissed by seeking in it just another instance of that refined technique of lying which is all that National Socialist propaganda supposedly amounts to. What, then, does Goebbels mean by that statement?

On June 4th of last year one hundred years had elapsed since the birth of Hermann Cohen. No German philosophical review and no contemporary German philosopher noted the date. In Germany the greatest efforts have been made to forget the name of Hermann Cohen, and to efface or suppress his philosophical work. But all these efforts will prove useless. Future historians of German philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century will regard Cohen as one of the greatest representatives of that period.

When an outstanding English educator was asked whether the educational plans for the postwar period, now being discussed in England, contained revolutionary ideas, his answer was that the plans would not be English if they were revolutionary. The Beveridge plan is very English in its nonrevolutionary character, and yet its reforms are so bold that it confirms the statement of the report: "a revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolution, not for patching." The plan aims at the abolition of want, through measures of social security.

Review of book by Arthur C. Millspaugh. Washington: Brookings Institution. 1942. vii and 107 pp.

Review of book by John D. Black. Cambridge: Harvard Committee on Research in the Social Sciences. 1942. 360 pp., index 7 pp.

Review of book by Karen Horney. New York: W. W. Norton. 1942. 303 pp., index 5 pp.

Review of book by Logan Wilson. New York: Oxford University Press. 1942. 248 pp.

Review of book by Theodora M. Abel and Elaine F. Kinder. New York: Columbia University Press. 1942. xiii & 215 pp.

Review of book by John U. Nef. Walgreen Foundation Lectures, 1940-41.] Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1942. 410 pp., index 9 pp.

Review of book by T.R. Glover. Cambridge: University Press. New York: Macmillan. 1942. 234 pp., index 7 pp.

Review of book by Stetson Conn. Yale Historical Publications, Miscellany, XLI.] New Haven: Yale University Press. 1942. 284 pp., bibliographical note and index 33 pp.

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