Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/595

 REVIEWS 579

and energy which are wasted in misdirected methods were trained to united and rational action, many of the evils of alcohol could be reduced far more effectively than is true at present.

C. R. HENDERSON.

Russia and Its Crisis. By PAUL MILYOUKOV. Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1905.

Mr. Milyoukov has given us in this book a profound, detailed, and scientific study of the historical elements which have made Russia what she is today. There is no other book in the English language which permits the reader to penetrate so far into the mys- teries of that witch's kettle boiling between the Baltic and the Black Seas. If you wish to know about the development of autocracy and its Satanic limb, the Orthodox church ; if your interest is directed to the peasant and his economic and moral condition ; or if you want to inform yourself about the development of socialism and political parties in general about these things and a dozen other matters, you will find a treasure of material collected at first hand and pre- sented with a cogency which will convince the most skeptical. Not that the author holds a brief for any cause or party. He is, of course, a generous believer in free popular activity, but his argument is primarily historical, and his method vigorously scientific. With- out the use of a vituperative phrase, and with no other help than his vast information and his penetrating power of analysis, he gradually leads the reader to the perception of the sham, the iniquity, and the utter untenableness of the autocratic system. The closeness of the argument, delivering stroke upon stroke, requires the most unremit- ting attention, and will weary the superficial student long before the end is reached. All such are warned from these premises, not, how- ever, without an expression of regret that the author, who commands a stout and clear pragmatic style, was not able to lighten the labor of the conscientious reader by an infusion of some of the grace and picturesqueness in which even the most stubborn historical material abounds. This excessive solidity is adequately explained when we remember that Mr. Milyoukov employs, and on the whole with ad- mirable effectiveness, a tongue to which he was not born.

FERDINAND SCHWILL.