Another very searching study of European politics of the world war is that by a Cuban scholar, Professor Ferrara of the University of Havana. This study is entitled Causes and pretexts of the world war. (New York. American-NeoLatin Library. 1918. 314 p. $1.50.)

Drs. Whittem and Long of Harvard University have applied their scholarship and teaching skill to good advantage in the little book entitled French for soldiers, which they have just prepared for emergency use. (Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1917. 130 p. 75c.)

A very readable and stimulating book on the whole subject of prison administration and prison reform is The prison and prisoner, edited by Miss Julia K. Jaffray, Secretary of the National Committee on Prisons and Prison Reform. The book is made up of contributions from a dozen or more students of prison problems and is dedicated, appropriately enough, to Mr. Adolph Lewisohn, who has made himself a leader of national influence in the movement to improve the condition and the treatment of prisoners. (Boston. Little, Brown & Company. 1917. 218 p. $2.50.)

A very good book with which to begin the study of Spanish is The foundation course in Spanish, by Mr. L. Signan of the Stuyvesant High School in New York City. (New York. The Macmillan Company. 1918. 278 p. $1.00.)

One does not often see a more compact and well-made little introductory textbook than Simplest spoken French, by W. F. Giese and Barry Cerf of the University of Wisconsin. The book is the outgrowth of a series of lessons originally prepared for use in military camps, but its very practical contents and arrangement indicate that it will have a much wider field of usefulness. (New York. Henry Holt & Company. 1918. 108 p. 60c.)

A vigorous and well-constructed setting forth of the German attack on civilization is contained in The great crime and its moral, by J. Selden Willmore. (London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1917. 323 p. 6s.)

A careful study in a field not hitherto much cultivated in English is entitled France, England and the European democracy, by Dr. Charles Cestre, Professor in the University of Bordeaux. M. Cestre is well known in the United States owing to his having been once or twice a visiting teacher at Harvard University. He writes with large knowledge and with true vision. The translation from the French has been made by Professor Turner of the University of California. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1918. 354 p. $2.50.)

In The Story of the Nations series there now comes a useful volume on Denmark and Sweden, by Dr. Jon Stefansson of Kings College, London. The book is attractively written and brings much unfamiliar knowledge within the reach of American students. Particularly useful is the treatment of the history of Iceland and Finland, of which very little is generally known. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1917. 378 p. $1.50.)

The contributions by Ferrero to the history of Rome are well known and highly esteemed. It is with no small satisfaction therefore, that we greet a book from his pen, agreeably rendered from the Italian, which has been written for the use of teachers in schools, colleges and universities. The author and his collaborator, Professor Barbagello of Milan, have held firmly to two cardinal principles: first, that in history we can not hope to know everything, and second, that what certainty there is diminishes as we descend from great events which can be kept in relation to each other, to the smaller instances which escape from any such correlation. The book is entitled A short history of Rome, and will appear in five volumes, of which the first, covers a period from the foundation of the city to the death of Julius Cæsar. We venture to predict for this book a wide use and influence. (New York. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1918. 510 p. $1.90.)

NOTES AND NEWS

It is not often that one finds on the editorial page of the daily newspaper a thoroly well-drawn portrait of an obnoxious type of human being, but the following paragraphs which appeared on the editorial page of the issue of the New York Tribune for March 31 last

The Intellectualist

are a gem:

Intellectualism in time of peace is an attitude of fine and pleasing texture, an art for the few, a luxury for the non-acquisitive, a substitute for faith, a remote and snobbish futility. Intellectualism in time of war is a liability.

In all countries, even Germany, it is morally and emotionally bankrupt. It tends also to be alien and Bolshevist. In Germany it is often suspected of being pro-Ally. In England, France and the United States it is much suspected of being pro-German. Everywhere it is anti-capitalistic and anemically revolutionary.

It has nothing in common with its beloved masses except an incurable dissatisfaction with everything in the world that is. The sources of that emotion, however, are not in both cases the

same.

The children of unrestraint are openly envious. They want more of life's tangible goods, including play time; and they shall have more, as fast as they can assimilate it. This no power on earth can prevent.

But the intellectualist is contemptuous of life's goods, or pretends to be. He demands them not for himself but for these others, in order that the sum of human happiness may be increased. Yet he is not interested in happiness. He would be almost as scornful of happiness as of wealth.

It is probable that the dissatisfaction of the intellectualist with the state of the world has its root in a sense of his own emptiness, and that his solicitude for the masses is owing more to his contempt for the banalities of material success than to any deep feeling of altruism.

You never know for sure, any more than you know where the intellectualist really stands on the irrational calamity of war, or the commonplace virtue of patriotism.

We doubt if he is ever sure of himself.

His mind with increasing intensity vibrates between the two poles of a thought until at length it is by any working test static. We are moved to these reflections by reading in The New Republic an article entitled Seeing the War Through. We read it first from the end to the beginning, which is the way to read an intellectual article, and then from beginning to end, and we can not believe The New Republic knows what kind of war it wants. A few weeks ago it was for obtaining a victory by diplomacy. Since then there has been the peace of diplomacy at BrestLitovsk, and now on the West front there is only a taut thin line of bodies between "the intolerable German thing" and the precious, if imperfect, democracy we are fighting for.

We supposed from the caption that The New Republic had come to the idea of a military victory as something now inevitable. But we read that

The Americans who are insisting on the militarizing of their country now by the subordination of political to military victory and by the adoption of the European scale of armament are the most flagrant and dangerous quitters. It is they who under the pretence of fighting to the bitter end are abandoning the belief in the political objects and the hope for beneficent political results which can alone make prolonged fighting worth while.

Still it is for seeing the war thru, by force if need be, for in another place it says that to see it thru "means, of course, primarily a volume and a rate of military preparation which, when it comes to a head, will make German success hopeless." Intellectualism, impotent and static.

In these troubled times when so many careers full of promise are being cut short by the war, we are more than ever dependent upon those men of maturer years Émile Durkheim whom we regard as tried and trusted leaders. It was, therefore, with special regret that students of all nations heard of the recent death of Émile Durkheim, pro

fessor of Sociology at the Sorbonne, and a philosopher of marked distinction.

Durkheim combined in a rare degree the qualities of a scholar and of a teacher. He never allowed his researches to interfere with his teaching, and he found time and strength both to make important and original contributions to sociology and to social philosophy, and to instruct and inspire many eager students who, under the influence of his personality, became veritable disciples. He was fundamentally an idealist, and the strength of his belief restored faith to many doubting hearts.

His entire philosophy is based upon the hypothesis that man has a dual personality, that his inner life is a perpetual conflict between his will and his desires, between the individualistic and the social instinct. Society, Durkheim believed, is a collective conscience, and he traced in detail the development of this conscience, its psychology, and the laws by which it is governed.

The development of his philosophy may be followed in his four principal books: La Division du travail social, La Méthode en sociologie, Le Suicide, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. In his early work we find traces of Spencerism, but in later life he drifted farther and farther away from this influence. He has often been described as a worthy successor of Comte, but he was superior to his master in the extent of his information and in his good sense.

The death in action of his son, who had left his studies at the outbreak of the war in order to become an aviator, stimulated Durkheim to renewed vigor in the defense of his country's cause. As a writer, as an editor, and as the initiator of patriotic movements, he was untiring in his work for France.

M. Durkheim was less than sixty years of age, and he was still at the height of his intellectual power. His death deprives the world not only of a great scholar, but of a splendid and an inspiring personality.

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