Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/1019

983 BOOK REVIEWS 983 of Labor. This leads the author to emphasize the freedom of the individual as against both the state and the group. The problem is evidently to find a mean between despotic unity and disintegration. He does not, it would seem, solve this problem, but he blocks out the factors which will determine its solution. Devices like federalism and the separation of powers help keep authority within boimds, but Uberty is less a tangible substance than an atmosphere. The most carefully planned machinery of government will break down unless it is operated by men who think. "Everyone who has engaged in public work is sooner or later driven to admit that the great barrier to which he finds him- self opposed is indifference." " "Thought is the one weapon of tried utility in a difl&cult and complex world." ^^ Consequently, the mental qualities and methods of the electorate, the three branches of the government, the leaders of industrial groups, and the civil service, become a decisive element in political life. Repression of thought in the electorate and the civil service will produce in the end just the kind of spirit that we want to get rid of, — the revolutionary spirit. The experience of France, set forth in the last chapter of the book, shows this conclusively. It is all very well to say that men ought to be loyal to the state. What do we mean by the state? After all, it comes right down to the government that we deal with, and the government comes down to the human beings that we deal with, which means those who will on occasion put us into the hands of the poUce. If the individuals in the legislatures and the departments of justice and on the bench do not stand for the best things men stand for, — for the development of mind and spirit, and the search for truth, — men begin to wonder whether, after all, that government ought to endure. We cannot love the state as a mystical unity if that unity as we actually face it prevents us from living a true human life. So, in order to make people loyal to the state, you must make the state the kind of institution that they want to be loyal to. Such is the lesson of this very able book. Z. C, Jr. The Conflict of Laws Relating to Bills and Notes, preceded by a Com- parative Study of the Law of Bills and Notes. By Ernest G. Lorenzen, Professor of Law in Yale University. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1919. pp. 337. The principal part of this work consists of several articles recently printed in law magazines; but much additional value has been given to them by in- cluding the law of Latin-America and of Japan among those compared in the text. A lengthy Appendix has been added, containing the American Negotiable Instnmients Act, the English Bills of Exchange Act, the Convention of the Hague on Bills and Notes, and the Uniform Law which formed part of it, together with very useful comparative tables of sections. An eight-page bibliography follows. It is a pleasure to have so painstaking and scholarly a work. The concise pages of the text represent a thorough study of the subject, a careful thinking through, a clear and logical arrangement of the matter, a sufficiently full refer- ence to authorities, and the matured conclusion of the author on every point. As one studies the work one wonders not that so much could be made out of a narrow subject, but that so much could be carefidly stated and considered in so small a compass. The usefulness of the book to the lawyer and the merchant is apparent. We look for a wonderful expansion of commerce; we are preparing for commercial relations with every part of the world. Whatever else this may entail, it cer- " Pages 107-108. " Page 188.