SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



851 



what is being done in the other 

 branches of science, and an impor- 

 tant step would be taken toward do- 

 ing away with the unfortunate nar- 

 rowing influence which special sci- 

 entific work is too apt to exercise. 



The fixing of the last week in 

 June as the time for holding the 

 next meeting of the association, 

 which is to be in New York, is a de- 



parture from recent practice as to 

 date, but, aside from the special rea- 

 son for it in this particular case 

 the probability that many of the 

 members will be at the Paris Expo- 

 sition during the following August 

 the experiment seems a desirable 

 one because of the almost invari- 

 ably excessive heat to which August 

 meetings are exposed. 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



EVIDENCES are apparent in many quarters of a reaction against the 

 headlong rush toward aggression and territorial aggrandizement in which 

 the American people have allowed themselves to be carried away. For a 

 time the lovers of the Constitution of the United States as the fathers 

 of the republic left it and Lincoln glorified it were bewildered, stunned 

 by the revolution suddenly precipitated upon us from Washington, while 

 the people at large seemed to be wild with enthusiasm for they knew not 

 what, and men suffered themselves to be led they knew not whither. 

 Very slowly the true patriots recovered their voices, and signs appear that 

 the people are at last getting into a mood to listen to reason. President 

 David Starr Jordan's Imperial Democracy* comes very opportunely, 

 therefore, to call to the minds of those who can be induced to think some 

 of the forgotten principles of American policy, and to depict, in the terse, 

 incisive style of which the author is master, the true nature and bearing 

 of those iniquitous proceedings to which the American people, betrayed 

 by treacherous leaders, have allowed themselves to become a party. Presi- 

 dent Jordan was one of the first who dared, in this matter, to make a public 

 protest agaist this scheme of aggression. His first address on the subject 

 Lest we Forget delivered to the graduating class of Leland Stanford 

 University, May 25, 1898, was separated only a few days in time from 

 Prof. Charles Eliot Norton's exposure of the reversal of all our most cher- 

 ished traditions and habits which the precipitation of the war with Spain 

 had brought about. The two men must share the honor of leadership in 

 the awakening movement. In this address President Jordan gives a true 

 definition of patriotism as " the will to serve one's country ; to make one's 

 country better worth saving " not the shrilling of the mob, or trampling 

 on the Spanish flag, or twisting the lion's tail. Even so early he foresaw 

 the darkness of the future we were bringing upon ourselves, and said: 

 " The crisis comes when the war is over. What then ? Our question is not 

 what we shall do with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It is what 

 these prizes will do to us." This, with the wickedness of the whole busi- 

 ness, is the burden of most of the other papers in the volume. In the paper 



* Imperial Democracy. A Study of the Relation of Government by the People, Equality before 

 the Law, and other Tenets of Democracy, to the Demands of a Vigorous Foreign Policy, and other 

 Demands of Imperial Dominion. By David Starr Jordan. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 

 Pp. 293. Price, $1.50. 



