January 15, 1920] 



NATURE 



495 



gories," or "a synoptical survey of the grand 

 human bi-directional spiral," are disturbing, and 

 may well be forbidding, to general readers. 



Still, Mr. Branford takes a clear and strong 

 view upon certain points which vitally concern the 

 theory of government. Nothing can be better 

 than the passage in which he defines the guiding 

 spirit of the new era (p. 143)- It is almost too 

 late to advocate now the rights of women ; for 

 womanhood has already entered upon its political 

 heritage ; but he rightly bases the enfranchisement 

 of women upon their interest, which is at least 

 equal to men's, in the good order of the State 

 (p. 28). Mr. Branford will carry the assent of all 

 wise thinkers in proposing ' ' to drop the rootedly 

 false distinction between manual work and brain 

 work," a distinction which "has worked so 

 fatally and so long against the humanisation of all 

 labour, against its higher productivity, and against 

 the social solidarity and happiness of mankind " 

 {p. 100). AH that he says about Labour is worthy 

 of serious regard. It is only right, too, to ex- 

 press an acknowledgment of the passages (for 

 example, on pp. 79 and 80) in which he defines 

 the successive relations between the family and the 

 city, the region, the nation, the State, and 

 humanity as a whole. 



But when the book is judged in the light of its 

 title, as " a new chapter in the science of govern- 

 ment," it cannot be said that Mr. Branford 's posi- 

 tive reforms are altogether convincing. The most 

 original of them seems to be an inference which he 

 draws from the ' ' warp and weft, " as he calls 

 them, of society, i.e. the geographical or 

 regional and the occupational or industrial divi- 

 sions of mankind. He sees clearly that, so long 

 as mankind is distributed geographically into 

 countries or nations, and into these alone, patriot- 

 ism itself must be exposed, as it was in Germany, 

 to the danger of assuming a selfish, violent, and 

 aggressive character. He finds, or hopes to find, a 

 counter-balancing force in the various occupations 

 of mankind. Thus if all Englishmen are natur- 

 ally united in the cause of England, the miners or 

 the railwaymen, not in England alone, but all the 

 world over, may be united in support of their 

 own industry. There will then be an international 

 or cosmopolitan sense balancing the local patriotic 

 sense of particular countries. This is, or was 

 in the days before the war, the idea of the Labour 

 Party ; but when the war broke out, even the 

 Socialists in Germany suffered their vocational or 

 occupational feeling to be merged in their patriot- 

 ism; and so it remained, at least until the scales 

 of victory began to incline against the German 

 Empire. 



Mr. Branford looks forward to a "Grand Coun- 

 NO. 2620, VOL. 104] 



cil of Humanity," which he conceives as "a 

 world-bicameral legislature," containing, after the 

 manner of the British Constitution, two Chambers, 

 the Lower being geographical and the Upper 

 occupational ; and it is through this Grand Coun- 

 cil that he hopes to attain the solution of the poli- 

 tical, social, and industrial problems which are 

 now dislocating the civilised world. Upon the 

 whole, if Mr. Branford cannot be said to have 

 made a solid contribution to political science, he 

 has thrown out a good many suggestive ideas 

 which may well bear fruit in the political history 

 of the new-born age. J. E. C. Welldon. 



AMERICAN BOOKS ON AGRICULTURE. 

 (i) Productive Agriculture. By Prof. John H. 

 Gehrs. Pp. xii + 436. (New York: The Mac- 

 millan Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., 

 Ltd., 191 7.) Price 5s. 6d. net. 



(2) Farm Concrete. By K. J. T. Ekblaw. 

 Pp. xi -I- 295. (New York : The Macmillan 

 Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1917.) 

 Price 85. 6d. net. 



(3) Peach-growing. By H. P. Gould. (The 

 Rural Science Series.) Pp. xxi -f 426 -H xxxii 

 plates. (New York : The Macmillan Co. ; 

 London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1918.) 

 Price 10s. 6d. net. 



(i) r^ROM the house of the Macmillan Co., of 

 Ji New York, there issues a constant flow 

 of good agricultural books, and it is gratifying 

 to find that the three now to hand are fully equal 

 to some of their predecessors. 



The first book, by Prof. J. H. Gehrs, of the 

 Warrensburg State Normal School of Montana, 

 is written for school children of the upper classes 

 who propose to take up farming as the business 

 of their life. It is frankly vocational : " this is 

 not primarily a book about agriculture, but one 

 on ' Productive Agriculture. ' . . . Unless this 

 book helps to increase the average yields, im- 

 prove stock, make for better and more fruit, and 

 promote better farm management, it will have 

 failed of the purpose for which it was written." 



It may at once be' stated that the book deserves 

 to achieve success. The subject-matter is very 

 interesting ; the book is full of bits of old country- 

 lore that always make a strong appeal to the 

 country child and the countryman, and the in- 

 formation so far as we can see is sound. Under 

 the heading "Wheat," for instance, the author 

 gives a chart showing the production in bushels 

 of the more important wheat countries of the 

 world with the percentage that each contributes 

 to the world's total. This brings out in striking 

 manner the fact that Europe normally con- 



