NEW BOOKS abroad, 1 upon an almost unbroken tradition of moral philosophy which has paid close attention to the psychology of moral action and the validity of accepted moral standards. We have of course suffered severely from "estrangement" and other distinctive ills of modern civilization. But what is, for the present, alarming is that the public has hardly any sense of the limitations of scientific knowledge. The need is, not for a new philosophy, but for thinkers who are not afraid to maintain that the philosophy of the past is still relevant to modern problems. The word existentialia (pp. 106, 175) appears to me to be in no known language, but perhaps it is Heideggerian. On p. 154, "past" is a mistake for "passed". On p. 182, the word autochthone, in the quotation from Goethe, seems to be mistranslated. On p. 103, the remark "Heidegger renews the question by which Aristotle has dislodged the old metaphysics, the question concerning the meaning of being", seems confused: for, in the first place, it was Plato's Eleatic Stranger who asked this question, and secondly, it might be more correct to say that metaphysics began when it was asked. D. J. ALLAN.
NEW BOOKS only too obvious when the concluding chapter, called misleadingly "Summary and Conclusion," is studied; for there many new and interesting problems are opened up rather than a sober summary given of what has gone before. Perhaps the explanation of this diffuseness is that the book was begun in 1934, and laid aside for ten years over the war period. It looks, therefore, as if the author began by writing up the Wurzburg experiments as a critique of associationism and then added more and more material which seemed relevant, in a general way, to the centralist-peripheralist controversy. The result, in spite of these structural defects, is nevertheless eminently worth while. R. S. PETERS.
LABOUR AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT restore it to health. The labour movement, as I have tried to show, has a profound need of a vigorous democratic life at the local level, both as an end in itself, and in order to remedy the twin evils of centralization and bureaucracy. Without a prompt and effective recognition of this truth, the urge towards an enhanced spirit of community, a greater sense of fraternity, freedom, and equality, on which the Labour Party was nourished in its earlier days, will never find expression.In the past we had a right to feel proud of our achievements m the realm of local government. The present state of local government is one of which it is difficult not to feel ashamed. All parties must share the responsibility for what has happened. But the Labour Party has a special duty to consider how and why it came 'to embark on the destructive courses of the post-war years, and toaretrace its steps to the greater wisdom of its earlier beliefs.
I HE economics of how to pay for the war,' and (what is more important) of who is to pay for it, niay be discussed from two distinct points of view. The first treats the war as a gigantic extra burden which has to be carried by the existing economic machine in such a way as to cause as little dislocation as possible. The second sees in the stresses of war conditions an opporturky to make changes which are desirable in themselves, which ought to have been made anyhow, and which it is intended should either themselves be permanent, or should at Beast contain the germ of permanent change. In this artkle I propose to discuss the subject quite shamelessly from thc second point of view.It is necessary first to get some idea of the magnitude of the problem. All the estimates are guesswork; but there seems to be a fairly general agreement that we should calcdate in terms of an overall cut in private civil consumption of the order of 40 per cent.2 Now the question whether the war is to be paid for by taxation, by loans (voluntary or compulsory) or by inflation, is wholly secondary to the primary issue : How are you going to share this 40 per cent cut as between the rich and the poor? Of all our various authors Mr. Clarke tackles this question most directly, with a suggestion that the burden might be distributed on the basis of a 60 per cent reduction for those in the over E2j0 per annuni class, and 25 per cent for those below this figure. Tbr Political Economy of War. By A. C. Pigou. (Maanillan. 5s.) Tk Economic Effwt of Wm. By R. W. B. Clarke. (Allen & Unwin. 7s. 6d.) Hmv to Pay w tbc Wm. By E. F. M. Durbm. (Routledge. 3s. 6d.) Ppring for tL War. By Geoffrey Crowther. (Oxford Pamphlet. 3d.) H m to Pay fw tbc Way. By J. M. Keynes. (M-. IS.) ' Mr. Keynes works on much lower figures ; but he budgets for one year only.
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