The United States and the World.
Pax Britamericana. The Future of the United States, Cagada and the British Empire. By John MacCormac. (Routledge. los. 6d.) The Coming Future : A Prescription. By Carl Dreher. (John
Lane. 12S. 6d.)
THESE two books have much in common and have a double value ; they discuss problems of interest to all the world and they reveal American attitudes to those problems. Mr. MacCormac covers far more ground than Mr. Dreher.; indeed, one of the weaknesses of this excellent tract for the times is its brevity. Master of a lively; epigrammatic style, Mr. MacCormac has too little consideration for the solid, not slow-witted but yet slow reader, who tends to swallow the epigrams without digesting them. Mr. Dreher is a much less skilled writer than Mr. MacCormac ; he has the fondness for analogy that is the trade mark of the amateur economist (he admits that this is possibly a -weakness), but he is a far better writer and a far more interesting thinker than many more pretentious and better publicised leaders Of American thought.
Mr. MacCormac and Mr. Dreher are both more or,less conscious adapters of the doctrines of Veblen to the modern world. Both are critics of .Mr. Burnham's doctrine of the "managerial revolution." Both are convinced that the day of old-fashioned capitalism is over, that the dream of a return to economic " normalcy" such as haunts the mind of Mr. Spangler, of the Republican National Committee, is a dream, or a nightmare, with no chance of materialisation in this world. Both are convinced that some of the delays in making American economic power effective are due to the survival of a belief in the automatic productive virtues of capitalism that is now a mere superstition. Mr. Dreher goes further ; the main obstacle to American production is American business, the survival of the habits of the salesman, the advertiser, the banker into a new technologically transformed world. Mr. Dreher has some interesting suggestions to put forward for the liberation of production from business ; he puts them forward with no air of infallibility and with a candid confession that they are neither original nor profound. Basically, Mr. Dreher's weakness (the equivalent of some of the business illusions he casti- gates) is that the separation of production from mere politics is easy. Mr. MacCormac knows better. The real levers of command in the modern world are in the State, and control of the State is politics, disguise it as you may. The " dollar-a-year " men stay in Washington because they have discovered this, and Professor Burnham's " managers " and Mr. Dreher's technicians have not.
Politique d'abord, that is the theme of Mr. MacCormac's dis- cussion of the obstacles to American action on the principle of enlightened self-interest—which involves the acceptance by the United States of the responsible leadership of the English-speaking world. It is the lack of political wisdom that is the main reproach he brings against the leaders of America. (Mr. Roosevelt is not included in this class.) Mr. MacCormac, himself a Canadian with long expetience both of London and of Washington, is extremely shrewd in his discussion of the psychological barriers between Britain and America ; sometimes he is more than shrewd, he is wise. Anybody who is puzzled by the touchiness, the occasional surliness and the downright morbidness with which some eminent Americans regard British policy and power should read Mr. MacCormac. And so should the well-meaning sentimentalists who sell "Old England," thatched cottages and feudal castles to a market which fundamentally dislikes just those aspects of English life thus thrust under its nose. For one friend won or touched by the England of Agnes Duer Miller's "White Cliffs," ten are irritated or made suspicious. Is this a war to make England safe for flunkeys?
Mr. MacCormac, a Canadian, is presumably within his riga', when he attacks the administration of Mr. Mackenzie King with a ferocity that recalls an American conservative discussing that Man." Mr. MacCormac is of Irish origin, and he takes a page or two to express his (unfavourable) opinion of the policy of Ireland. On the other hand, he has an extremely high opinion of the political, industrial and military maturity of Australia. This Dominion feud is interesting, but discretion forces a conclusion on the thankful note of "non nostrum inter vos tames componere lites."
D. W. BROGAN.
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