contract with their lessee, on the ground "that the interest of the theatre" demands such a change. For the Director, the sudden termination of the contract probably means the forced sale at an enormous sacrifice of his entire equipment-in short, complete ruin.

A nation which has only recently entrusted its municipal authorities with so comparatively uncontroversial a business as education, will listen with sympathy to the plea that the interference of the municipality in any but the financial side of an artistic enterprise must be intolerable. A telling instance is quoted of a member of the Committee who insisted on the production in his own provincial city, of a play which had specially appealed to him in the tender mood induced by an exquisite supper in Berlin. The play was not suited to the temper of the provincial audience; it was not within the capacities of the caste. Yet the Director was obliged to acquiesce, against his better judgment, and earn a fiasco, which did not endear him to his own Committee.

A more equitable law of the theatre, for in the matter of contract, of general conditions and of liability to accident the theatrical profession lies outside the common law, would seem to be an immediate and crying need. Such a law has been drafted by the Association of German actors, at whose instance the whole enquiry was undertaken, and Dr. Reimers criticises the demands of the Association with impartiality. Some of them she regards as exaggerated and likely to defeat their own ends. On the other hand, there is nothing exaggerated in the claim that Sunday rehearsals, when there are already two performances on that day, and any night rehearsals, which are held after the evening performance, should be abolished. The regulation of Sunday labour and of night work for women has been proved feasible in other occupations-it should not be impossible here. The exclusive rights given by theatrical contracts to the employer constitute as flagrant an injustice as ever found its way into a Statute book. They should be abolished. The actor is peculiarly liable to accident; he should not be excluded from the ordinary law of compensation.

The only bright spot in the present situation is the inclusion of the actor in the new scheme of compulsory insurance. The law which ordains that every employee who earns no more than £100 a year shall come within the old-age pension scheme, while everyone who earns less than £125 shall be liable for sickness insurance, has removed the two worst rocks in the actor's path.

For the rest, nothing can save theatres from the consequence of cut-throat competition with each other, or actors from the

disasters of the mad rush that overcrowds the profession. Concessions for the opening of new theatres are granted with incredible recklessness, and obstacles only seem to attract capitalists to madder ventures. Stage-stricken young persons of both sexes are encouraged by unscrupulous teachers, often indeed actors who seek to add to their insufficient earnings by teaching their craft to fresh victims.

To the student of German economics nothing is more significant than the discouragement apparent in the writings of the majority of those who investigate the existing economic structure of society. Some, like the author of the Grundlagen des Modernen Zeitungswesens, hope, with the courage of despair, for an apparently spontaneous improvement in the tastes and habits of mankind. Dr. Reimers pins her faith to definite reforms, which shall bring the theatrical proletariat into line with the other classes who have already felt the benefits of social reform. But the panacea for our real ills, the remedy which shall deal with the monster of competition, is yet to seek. The most varied economic investigations converge upon a single point, and everywhere, below the surface, we can detect the stirrings of the same discontent. The newspapers, the theatres, and this trade and that industry, all would appear to make an increasingly precarious living, none are free from the reproach of exploitation. There is hardly an author who does not foreshadow a condemnation of the existing order, a question whether individualism, even fettered and restricted as it is, has not seen its day.

H. REINHERZ

By

Les Bases économiques de la Justice internationale. ACHILLE LORIA. Publications de l'Institut-Nobel norvegien. (London: Williams and Norgate. 1912.)

THE title of Professor Loria's work might be taken as indicating a treatise on international law in its relation to international trade. But its scope is much wider, and might perhaps be best indicated by some such English translation of the title as this: "The Operation of Economic Factors in the Evolution of International Society "-since Professor Loria uses "International Justice" in the larger general sense, and not in the more special juridical one. The book is thus of interest, not merely to lawyers and economists, but equally to the much larger public interested in the development of a science, or a philosophy, of international relationship. The needs of European

society will surely develop such science, drawing freely upon such existing divisions of study as law, politics, economics; just as certain other social needs have developed such new divisions of knowledge as genetics, which have been built up by drawing freely upon and combining pre-existing divisions.

In the library of such science-which has hardly as yet progressed as far as possessing an exact terminology-this book will take high rank, mainly by reason of its orderly classification of a wide range of facts showing the part that trade and industry have played in the development, not merely of political and constitutional forms, but of social and moral conceptions, such as religious toleration. The whole book is, indeed, a very clear demonstration of the truth that it is impossible to separate the economic from the moral and emotional developments of mankind -a demonstration which, in view of certain contemptuous criticisms commonly levelled at the more recent efforts to show a sound economic basis for international co-operation, most certainly needs to be made.

But Professor Loria will be read more for his facts than for the conclusions which his book enables us to draw. In the statement of his case he has adopted the following method: He enumerates in one chapter those factors which favour the establishment of law and religious toleration-organised society, in fact and in the next those which operate to destroy them; or, taking the same factor, shows in one chapter how it operates to the development, and in the next how it operates to the destruction of those things. It will readily be understood how such a method is well adapted to show clearly the isolated action of each particular factor, but ill adapted to show the net result of the totality of the factors. And the matter is in no way mended when we get a third chapter entitled "Les Rapports économiques rétablissent partiellement l'organisation juridique internationale," and a fourth entitled "Les Rapports économiques rétablissent intégralement le Droit internationale"!

The difficulty, moreover, of this method is accentuated by the arrangement of the book. There is no table of contents, no analysis of chapters, no index, no differences of type to distinguish the author's statements from passages which he cites and criticises, and the footnotes, instead of being at the bottom of the respective pages, are lumped together at the end of the book. These are trifles, perhaps, but they are trifles which have made many books, which might be lucid and coherent, positively maddening to read.

Moreover, such a method makes Professor Loria's book a particularly difficult one to criticise. Thus, in the chapter headed "Les rapports économiques detruisent l'organisation juridique internationale," the thesis of which seems to be (p. 30) that war "éclate toujours comme une réation contre la baisse du revenu," occurs the following passage :

"La guerre de Cuba n'est qu'un produit du déclin du revenu des fabriquants de sucre américains. La guerre du Transvaal est l'œuvre des financiers et des spéculateurs de mines d'or, qui espèrent pouvoir tirer de grands avantages d'une excursion militaire dans l'Afrique australe. Mais ces velléités des financiers britanniques sont à leur tour excitées par la baisse inquiétante du revenu anglais. La guerre russo-japonaise est un produit du déclin de l'assiette économique de la Russie et par conséquent de la baisse de son revenu, qui la pousse à la relever grâce à des expansions et des annexions violentes en Asie tandis que de son côté le revenu japanois à l'étroit dans les limites nationales, veut à tout prix s'étendre par l'exportation et par la colonisation de la Corée voisine et de la Mandchourie. La guerre actuelle de la France contre le Maroc a uniquement pour but de contraindre cette région à faire des frais, qu'elle ne pourra supporter sans recourir à un emprunt qui engraissera les banquiers français. Que dirai-je de plus? Aujourd'hui le germe d'une guerre possible est tout entier dans la rivalté économique de l'Allemagne et de l'Angleterre. L'Angleterre n'arbore le nouvel impérialisme de Chamberlain que le jour où elle sent menacée par l'Allemagne sa suprématie dans les industries textiles et métallurgiques; d'autre part la politique mondiale de Guillaume II. montre que l'unique but de l'action germanique est l'abaissement de la puissance commerciale anglaise. Les politiciens des deux pays, qui représentent la classe des commerçants, et occupent aujourd'hui partout le pouvoir, sont convaincus que leur patrie est destinée à une régression inévitable si elle ne triomphe pas de son rivale. Les unionistes anglais, comme les libéraux ou les radicaux partisans de l'expansion qui soutiennent Asquith, sont précisément une émanation des commerçants: ils rêvent de nouveaux marchés et de nouveaux clients. De même les nationalistes libéraux et les libéraux démocrates allemands, avec la National Zeitung à leur tête, ne sont que les délégués politiques des industriels de la Prusse Rhénane et de la Westphalie."

If this is intended as a partial statement to be read in conjunction with a parallel partial statement of the opposite case in the next or preceding chapter, criticism is, of course, disarmed.

But if it is intended as a complete and impartial summary of the whole of the factors or the determining factors of the conflicts enumerated, it is quite obviously imperfect. To represent the Spanish-American War or the Boer War as the outcome merely of financial intrigue is to ignore certain outstanding facts which cannot be ignored if we are to have any just notion of the processes of war-making. In fact, one can say that, in the case of the Anglo-German conflict for instance, merchants and financiers as a whole fully realise its futility, and are throwing their influence against its precipitation, while huge sections of the public, who are unaware of possessing any interest in the conflict at all, are throwing the influence of their excitability and temper on the side of conflict. Your honest roaring jingo, who is so great and dangerous a factor in the precipitation of these conflicts, has, for the most part, no earthly private interest to serve by the war which his general influence may at times. render inevitable. His action is due to genuine hatred or fears based upon false conceptions of the relationship of foreign nations to his own. He may think, like Lord Roberts, that foreign trade is a matter, not of having things to sell, but of having power to exercise against someone else; or he may conceive of foreign trade as a fixed quantity which we "take" from one another as the balance of power drifts from one to the other; or of all nations as struggling economic units, rival business firms, the gain of one being the loss of the other-one could go on reciting indefinitely the sort of picture which is evidently in the jingo mind, and which necessarily and logically sets up the hostility, hatred and funk which play so large a rôle in bringing about international conflicts. These things may have their origin partly in economic conceptions, but are psychologically distinct. To represent the conflicts enumerated by Professor Loria as the direct outcome of financial intrigues reminds one of the Chinese Socialist who lays down certain doctrines concerning the relation of cholera to the Capitalistic system. The story runs that a Chinese Coffin Trust, in the interest of its dividends, had bribed a provincial governor to suspend sanitary arrangements during an outbreak of cholera"Plain proof," argued the Socialist in question, "that cholera is a Capitalistic interest, and will never be successfully dealt with until we have abolished the Capitalistic state."

The most powerful economic forces of our time are those which operate unseen and unnoticed by those subject to them, and which escape conscious political control. It is not the result of any conscious policy of government which has made German