A clear, conscious desire to achieve Anglo-American hegemony, domination, world-rule (the term must necessarily be imprecise if it is to be useful) is almost certainly held by relatively few individuals, British or American; and even in a foggier form of general imperialistic aggressiveness it is by no means common among Americans, British, Canadians, Australians, and other English-speaking peoples. There simply isn’t the combination of doctrine, organization and leadership for outright Anglo-American aggression such, for instance, as the Nazis had. For one thing, the two nations still have their own private super-patriots.
One of the most discouraging aspects of the appearance of the atomic bomb is the inspiration it has given to a whole spate of utopian schemes for world government. These have had the unfortunate result of diverting attention from practicable opportunities for progress in international organization. Students of political science would do better if they bypassed utopianism and got down to the business of examining the many difficult problems associated with the establishment of international organizations which, though more limited in their aims and powers and emotionally less satisfying than utopias, have a future of real consequence to world political and economic development. There is at present a whole basketful of such organizations, some already in operation and some still in draft form, and a comparative and analytical study of these may be a significant enterprise.
Only recently, as a consequence of the revolution in monetary and employment theory caused by Keynes, a new element has been injected into the discussion of foreign trade, which has become known as the theory of the "foreign-trade multiplier." Formulated in an analogy to the famous investment multiplier, the foreign-trade multiplier theory contends that changes in the volume of foreign trade generate magnified changes in national income and employment. Thus while traditional theory stressed the function of foreign trade in increasing the average productivity of the resource employed, the new approach claims for foreign trade an ability to bring about an increase in the volume of employment.
Professor Wild’s recent book on Plato, Plato’s Theory of Man, is not simply a historical work. His presentation of Plato’s doctrine of man is animated by the zeal of a reformer and is meant to bring about a radical reorientation of the "philosophy of culture." Thoroughly dissatisfied with modern philosophy in all its forms, and unwilling to take refuge in Thomism, Wild turns back to classical philosophy, to the teaching of Plato and Aristotle, as the true teaching. At present very few will be prepared to accept this basic premise. But it is safe to predict that the movement which his book may be said to launch in this country will become increasingly influential and weighty as the years go by.
How to confront the two, the philosopher of history and the modern statesman? In actual life the philosopher of history and the statesman are not too willing to listen to each other—now less than ever, as ours is a time in which action tends to be thoughtless and thought inactive. Furthermore, we use both terms in a loose and flickering sense. Hence both the philosopher of history and the statesman are ambiguous animals.
Review of book by John R. Baker. New York: Macmillan. 1945. 120 pp.
Review of book by Emil Lengyel. New York: Harper. 1946. 278 pp.
Review of book by Hoffman Nickerson. New York: Putnam. 1945. 356 pp.
Review of book by William O. Shanahan. New York: Columbia University Press. 1945. 233 pp., appendix 35 pp.
Review of book by George Terborgh. Chicago: Machinery and Allied Products Institute. 1945. 226 pp.
Review of book by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton. With an introduction by Richard Wright. New York: Harcourt, Brace. 1945. 809 pp.
Review of book by Gladys Bryson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1945. 287 pp.
Review of book by Northwestern University Studies in the Humanities, No., 9. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 1945. 225 pp.
Review of book by Ida Pruitt. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1945. 248 pp.