C. Hartley Grattan

Henry S. Albinski. Canadian and Australian Politics in Comparative Perspective. Pp. 440. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

on. Drawing from international data sources, he provides as good an explanation of the military mind as one can find ; but, more importantly he devotes detailed data to an explanation of more fundamental issues affecting military professionals: nationalism, pessimistic beliefs in the nature of man, alannism, authoritarianism, and political conservatism. From this he draws conclusions designed to explain a military set of values and these are related to normative influence (the ability to affect the diffusion of certain values among the public) and political power to implement military objectives. These activities are enhanced by the greater attention now paid to officer education in political questions; and a US Army Command and General Staff College paper containing a strategic appraisal of the internal situation in Cambodia is included as an example of this political training. Results: pi creates a highly efficient, politically oriented, independent social structure, and p2 molds the individuals who are to serve it. What does this mean? Abrahamsson convincingly argues that to the extent pi and p2 are effective-and to the extent that differences result between military and civilian values-civilian control of the military establishment will be impaired. One can argue that this is not conducive to sound national defense policy and further hampers civil/military cooperation at the highest levels simply by the military’s persistent use of their own values orWeltanschauung in which they pursue political actions that are inconsistent with the society’s beliefs and interests. This certainly results in a significant lack of, or even absence of, civil/military goal congruence on possible key issues-witness the &dquo;Lavelle Case.&dquo; In situations where no countervailing power exists, chaos may result. Abrahamsson’s book requires thoughtful, professional reading, particularly his challenge of Huntington’s concept of military professionals with its well established civilian control thesis and the development of his major conclusions concerning military alarmism and political conservatism. This is not a book about the military-industrial complex, the military mind, nor a critique of the US Army. It is a book about military professionalism and political power and the interaction between pi and p2 that could have significant impact on the western democracies with their developing amilitarism which may eventually lead to a chaotic separation of the military from the civil society which it exists to serve.

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any important emergency or calamity occurs in a given society, the control and regimentation of its government begins to expand and grow; as soon as the emergency subsides, the government control declines&dquo; (p. 144). After a somewhat sketchy inductive verification of this proposition, Sorokin draws the general conclusion that &dquo;the medicine against Communism and totalitarianism is neither war, nor rearmament, nor threats, nor propaganda of hate, but peace, and lack of emergency&dquo; (p. 169). The least that can be said by way of criticism of this book is that it shares the fundamental weakness of most other books that deal with the present crisis. It stresses what should be, but fails to indicate how this can be accomplished. THEODORE ABEL

HEBERLE, RUDOLF. Social Movements: An Introduction to Political Sociology. Pp. xiii, 478. New York: Appleton- Century-Crofts, 1951.

flict in the modern woman (a rather omnibus category, incidentally) is not a flouting of biology but an incessant wavering between traditional sex roles and new, indeterminately defined, &dquo;masculinized&dquo; roles. In any event, the degree of acceptance or rejection of this thesis will probably depend, not so much on its demonstrability, as on the extent to which modern thought, confused over the unfulfilled promises of liberalistic doctrines, is seeking other faiths. The book is written with quiet good humor and a number of shrewd insights. Questioning the value of modern sex literature, the authors point out the feelings of inadequacy often resulting from the popular insistence on the husband’s insuring physical response from his wife and the frustration over his failure to do so. In

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American efforts to remain neutral from 1914 to 1917. It is this part of the book that will arouse controversy-and antipathy among the supporters of the orthodox view of why we went to war. But the studies of Ray Stannard Baker, Walter Millis, Harley Notter, and others, have gone far to substantiate the interpretations which the authors here give-of a substantial if not a theoretical partiality toward the Entente powers as to breaches of accepted rules (before 1914) of neutral and belligerent rights. The dilemmas confronting Wilson are searchingly exposed and analyzed; the result is perhaps the best account and appraisal of our period of neutrality which has yet been made from the legal viewpoint. In the third section, the authors review and criticize our postwar efforts to forge

MACIVER, R. M. The Web of Govern ment. Pp. ix, 498. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1947.

After completing a scholarly study of housing and slums, Mr. and Mrs. Ford came to the conclusion &dquo;that the slum problem could not be met satisfactorily without the prior or concomitant elimination of poverty&dquo; (Preface). Hence they set about reviewing and synthesizing the results of many studies &dquo;to determine how it is possible under the existing system to redistribute wealth in such a manner as may best serve humanity&dquo; (p. 186). This led to the problem of causation. Certain handicaps-mental deficiency, blindness, crippling conditions, and so forth-and certain hazards-sickness, accident, unemployment, old age, and death of breadwinner-were not hard to identify. Other factors were found to be rooted in our culture-wasteful exploitation of natural

4.50:

were delivered as public addresses at the Fourth Summer School of the Australian Institute of Political Science, held at Canberra in January, 1936. The outstanding general impression derived from a reading of them is that there is a crisis in Australian education exactly similar to that which grips the American educational world. The special elements which the speakers differentiate as peculiarly Australian do not detract from this generalization any more than an isolation of the peculiarly American problems would destroy the world significance of our predicament. Through nine-tenths of the educational literature of the day there runs the fundamental conviction that the task before us is the educating of the young to live under a vastly different social order from that previously known to man. The red-herring in the discussion is &dquo;indoctrination&dquo; about which Dr. George Counts has so much to say in his books and articles. It may come as something of a shock to most Americans that the Australians freely admit that their educational system has

MADIGAN, C. T. Central Australia. Pp. xi, 258. New York: Oxford University Press, 1936.

for many years held responsible positions in the German Civil Service. As National Socialists the authors accept the National Socialist state with much the same degree of finality that textbook writers in the United States accept theirs. Ignoring the dramatic aspects of German politics during the last few years, they confine themselves to a painstaking and systematic portrayal of the legal foundations of their totalitarian state.

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history, of ruling the outer provinces by setting one barbarian tribe against another. This policy, modernized, accounts for the reluctance of the Chinese to fight the Japanese and the stress they lay on the support of the League of Nations and the sympathy of the United States and the great European powers. Skillful diplomacy and not open struggle in the field against the invader is the instinctive reaction of the Chinese to any aggression. The article on Soviet Siberia, though it sets forth the position of Russia clearly, in the main, suffers regrettably from platitudi-

WALKER, E. RONALD. Unemployment Policy. Pp. xi, 258. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, Ltd., 1936. 5 shillings:

history, of ruling the outer provinces by setting one barbarian tribe against another. This policy, modernized, accounts for the reluctance of the Chinese to fight the Japanese and the stress they lay on the support of the League of Nations and the sympathy of the United States and the great European powers. Skillful diplomacy and not open struggle in the field against the invader is the instinctive reaction of the Chinese to any aggression. The article on Soviet Siberia, though it sets forth the position of Russia clearly, in the main, suffers regrettably from platitudi-