If you have a friend of the "let's-not-worry-about-peace-until-we-win-the-war" school, Professor Carr's latest work is the best obtainable antidote. If he recognizes the need for planning now but does not understand how it can be done, the book will furnish him with a generalized picture of one possible course of action. For, in this volume, the author has formulated both the clearest analysis of "what went wrong last time" and the most persuasive program for preventing a repetition of those mistakes that has yet appeared.

Formally, the work is divided into two parts, a historical examination of the collapse of nineteenth century ideals and a set of suggested lines of policy. Basically, according to this volume, the ills of the day are attributable to a lag between the belief in progress, characteristic of the last century, and a slowing down in the actual advances of the world. This divergence of ideals and realities has led to four marked crises; crises of democracy, of self-determination, of economic affairs, and of ethics. The author does not draft a new faith to close the gap, but he does indicate some of its necessary aspects, such as an emphasis on obligations rather than rights, and a centering of economic life around the consumer, not the producer.

The second part is a tentative suggestion of policies which may implement the new creed. These policies reflect a British point of view, but are equally applicable to the other United Nations. Professor Carr has wisely avoided the trap of laying down iron-bound organizational rules at the present time; instead, he has described the task to be faced and one way of getting at it. Few of these proposals can be termed startlingly new, but the manner of presentation is one of the few cogent and complete systems of reconstruction yet devised.

Despite the formal division, the volume is an organic whole, fitted together with the care of a Byzantine mosaic-maker. Here is a historian who deals intimately and knowingly of economics, ethics, and politics, and who is able to shatter the artificial barriers between them. Here is a Briton with the moral and intellectual courage to admit that his nation has lost her position of world leadership. Here, above all else, is an academic man without an academic mind.