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The Green Bag

class to appreciate an approaching change of environment which must alter its social status." DR.

CLEVELAND'S ORGANIZED DEMOCRACY Organized Democracy: An Introduction to the Study of American Politics. By Frederick A. Cleve land, Ph.D., LL.D. American Citizen Series, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D. Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London. Pp. xxxvi, 465 + 14 (index). ($2.50 net.) DR. CLEVELAND evidently felt that the word "democracy" ought to be part of the title of his book. His earlier treatment of a portion of the same subject was entitled, "The Growth of Democracy in the United States." From this small circumstance, how ever slight its importance may seem, one nevertheless gets a correct premoni tion of the tenor of the book. Our first impression was that the title"Organized Democracy" rather detracted from the dignity of so thorough and scholarly an exposition of the American constitu tional system. The writer showed him self so diligent in wide reading, historical research, and searching analysis, that it seemed as if a book of such largeness and solidity would better have borne some such title as "The Principles of the American State, in their Historical Development and Present-Day Appli cation." In comparison with such a title, "Organized Democracy" would seem to make a needless concession to the popular taste for the short, loose phrase. However, in spite of the fact that the author has performed his task in a scholarly spirit, with that recogni tion of the complexity of the American state which many latter-day writers labor to cover up, he is plainly actuated by a desire to provide something apart from a dispassionate work of political science. It is not as a critic but as a protagonist of American democracy that

he writes. Mark also the more liberal connotation that "Organized Democ racy" has, in comparison with "Limited Democracy" or "Self-Restrained Democ racy." Moreover, it is the noun rather than the adjective that has the stronger significance; it is of "Organized Democ racy" rather than of "The Organization of Democracy" that the book treats. We look in vain for such expressions as that indulged in by a recent writer in one of the economic journals, who spoke of "that half-truth, the notion that all men are created free and equal." For Dr. Cleveland this is evidently much more than a "half-truth." We have here a book which puts its unquestion ing faith in the soundness of the general will. The compositeness of the general will is recognized, but not in all its implications of strife between lower and higher wills. Nor is there any question ing of the notion that the majority must always be in the right. A treatise undertaken in this fashion has its defects and limitations. Dr. Cleveland's idea that he has solved the problem of the turmoil in our public affairs, by proposing the remedy of co-operation for the common welfare, is not a fertile conception, for it ignores the difficulty of finding out what is for the highest good of humanity. His view that women possess higher qualifi cations for the duties of citizenship than men is based upon a very incomplete sociological survey. His remarks about the recall of judges show a less pene trating understanding of the function of the judiciary than Mr. Judson's re cent little book exhibits. While the book has some conspicuous merits by reason of its comprehensive exposition of the details of our system of government as they affect the individual citizen, it suffers from the lack of a keen discrimination of the capacities