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find that elsewhere in this great country the volume of business is only two and ninetenths per cent below last year.

Surely these figures indicate that things are sound at the core, and that those who are shouting so loudly of the widespread depression live chiefly in the greater cities and draw their inspiration mainly from the metropolitan newspapers, which naturally reflect the subnormal feeling that results from an abatement of the speculative activities in which so many of those who live in these cities are engaged.

As has been previously pointed out, the reports of the stock market, being so widely published and so well advertised, wield an influence upon business sentiment that is altogether disproportionate to their real importance; and it is in an endeavor to dissipate the unwarrantable pessimism that now exists in many quarters that space is given to a mass of figures that would usually be uninteresting.

At present, however, they should inspire pride and confidence in the breast of every citizen of the United States. The world has been at war for over six weeks. The result in so far as this country is concerned has been to increase the value of an unexampled grain crop by about $500,000,000, which will more than offset the probable depreciation in the cotton crop. No American lives have been sacrificed and no American property has been destroyed, but thousands of our countrymen have been forced to return from Europe and go to work at home instead of spending a very large sum of Americanmade money abroad.

The monthly figures of iron production show an increase for August. The unfilledorder statement of the United States Steel Corporation reveals an increase in the tonnage of unfilled orders on the books of that company. The number of idle freight cars shows a decrease for the two weeks ending September 1. These data are perhaps not as favorable as they would have been in the absence of war, but at least they show a tendency toward expansion rather than contraction and do not justify pessimistic forebodings.

It is true that the market for foreign exchange has been somewhat disturbed and that the supply of investment capital will be for some time absorbed in taking care of the good securities which we shall shortly have to rebuy from the foreign holders who will

be impoverished by the war; but the real value of these securities will not be affected by the fact that we reacquire them cheaply, and in the end we shall profit immensely by the operation.

America cannot, of course, hope to escape some share of the economic loss which will result from the terrible destruction of life and property now in progress, but it begins to look as if that share would be a very small one, and it is difficult to see why the purchasing power of the United States as a whole should be reduced, except in so far as it will be responsive to the healthful and world-wide tendency toward post-bellum economy that will be made fashionable by the necessities of European poverty.

If we shall learn to practice this economy, it will be worth all that it seems likely to cost us, deplorable as is the event from which the lesson will be drawn.

Meantime, directly as a result of the war, we have an immensely increased prestige as a Nation, a world-wide appreciation of the advantages of democracy, greater contentment at home, a National solidarity that is intensified, and a closer sympathy between Government and business that means much for our economic progress in the future. These are our domestic blessings.

In so far as our international relationships are concerned, they, too, have already become sympathetically closer with every nation except Germany and Austria, and once the bitterness of conflict has subsided it is unlikely that any resentment toward us will be cherished by the peoples whose present misfortunes we deplore as the unfortunate consequence of a militarism and autocracy to which in theory we have always been opposed.

The commercial solidification of North and South America has been greatly hastened by the war. Canada has become a closer neighbor and a safe-deposit vault for American gold. The Kaiser has appealed to the President of the United States as the world's most notable representative of humanitarianism, and the feeling between the people of England and America is one of consanguine sympathy, accidentally intensified rather than diminished by the coincidence that it is just a hundred years ago that a British army occupied Washington. It was the triumph of American soldiers over those who were our foes, but are now our friends, that inspired Francis Scott Key to immortalize in song the Star-Spangled Banner,

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THE NEW BOOKS

which, with the Cross of St. George, is now recognized the world over as emblematic of the liberty, fraternity, and chivalrous selfrestraint that we are proud to call AngloAmerican.

I wish that I might know whether these figures of bank clearings are as interesting and inspiring to those who read this article

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as they are to him who writes it. As a rule statistics are wearisome and unappealing, and I have resorted to them in the existing situation only because it has seemed to me that if they are studied with a vision which perceives their true significance they will be reassuring as to the present and encouraging as to the future.

We regret to announce that Mr. Price's articles, which our correspondence shows have proved of distinct value and interest to readers, will hereafter appear once a month instead of once a week. This change is made because of the pressure upon our pages of articles directly

or indirectly connected with the war.-THE EDITORS.

THE NEW BOOKS

THE NEWER THINKING1 There is no "new theology." There is what has been well called "the newer thinking." The new thinking differs from the old theology in two fundamental respects. The old theology assumed that it was possible to construct a comprehensive system of philosophy into which all the various and seemingly contradictory facts of life could be fitted-a system which would thus explain the great mysteries. The newer thinking has no such ambition. It is possessed by the spirit of Paul, who said, "We know in fragments, and we prophesy in fragments." The newer thinking does not attempt to expound the truth. It only attempts to expound truths. Different members of this school present their respective views without troubling themselves overmuch on the question how their views are to be related to the views of other members of the same school.

The newer thinking differs from the old theology also in its method of inquiry. It does not start out with saying, "We must assume that there is one living and true God, immutable, eternal, incomprehensible," etc. It looks into life and inquires what has life to teach us respecting the Creator and the Ruler of the universe. It differs from the deist, John Stuart Mill, for example, by including in its survey of the phenomena of

Getting Together. Essays by Friends in Council on the Regulative Ideas of Religious Thought. Edited by James Morris Whiton. Sturgis & Walton Company, New York. $1.

life the whole realm of human experience. It includes in that survey such spiritual phenomena as remorse, repentance, forgiveness, hope, love. It includes not merely a recognition of the unity of physical phenomena recognized by the very word universe, but a certain moral unity in the seeming chaos of the world of men in action. It seeks to find an explanation for the moral progress of humanity, for the existence of the worldwide phenomena of religion, for the fact that men in all ages of the world have more or less clearly seen an ideal which inspired them and for which they had reverence, and especially for such a fact in human biography as Jesus Christ, and such a fact in human history as Christianity.

When independent thinkers thus start out upon an investigation of the human experiences, seeking with an open mind to ascertain what the world of experience has to teach them, and quite willing to learn one truth at a time, it is to be expected that their conclusions will often differ and sometimes clash. Out of this difference, and even out of this clashing, a more vital faith issues than out of any perfected system based on some previous assumption of something which "we must suppose."

Professor Eucken has shown very clearly that truth is not all to be ascertained by logical processes; that there are truths, and these most vital and fundamental, which can be ascertained only by experiencing them. Theology that is vital is an outgrowth

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of these experiences. It is an attempt to translate spiritual life into an intellectual philosophy. It assumes nothing but the reality of these spiritual experiences. It refuses to ignore any of them merely because they are inexplicable. It refuses to accept any theological theories which contradict human experience. It refuses, for example, to accept the statement that we in this twentieth century sinned in Adam many centuries ago, because no man ever experienced remorse or repentance for that hypothetical sin. It refuses to accept the notion that God will not forgive sin without exacting a penalty for it from some one, because that is inconsistent with the universal experience of mankind, among whom forgiveness is constantly exercised without exacting any penalty. It constructs its theory of inspiration out of the actual experiences of men who feel the inspirations to a higher life, and it inclines to explain the "thus saith the Lord" of the ancient prophets by the "thus saith

City of Numbered Days (The). By Francis Lynde. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.35. A reclamation story, well invented and well told. The Government engineer is building a great dam to impound waters which when released will destroy the "city of numbered days" unless fraud and bribery can bring about the abandoning of the project. His moral problem is peculiarly trying because he is tempted through love as well as through money. He does not escape unscathed, but what wrong he does he remedies. The tale is spirited and shows literary quality as well as story-telling skill.

Personality Plus. By Edna Ferber. The Fred

erick A. Stokes Company, New York. $1. "Personality Plus," it seems, is the possession in a salesman of such excessive charm that his prospective customers enjoy his society so much that they can't do business with him. At first this hindered the activities of Jock McChesney, the wide-awake, somewhat bumptious son of Emma McChesney, once the best saleswoman on the road, a good and clever lady much liked by readers of Miss Ferber's former stories. Soon Jock finds himself and makes his hit. The story is intensely modern, humorous, and shrewdly observant of business and of men and women.

Knight on Wheels (A). By Ian Hay. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.35.

Ian Hay is always a cheerful story-teller. His "knight" begins life as secretary to a sort of up-to-date Robin Hood, a professional beggingletter writer, who extracts money from wealthy sentimentalists on false pretenses and bestows it in really worth-while charity. Later our hero

the Lord" in the experience of the modern Christian.

These principles are illustrated in the volume entitled "Getting Together." It comprises contributions by representatives of the Baptist, Congregational, Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, Protestant Episcopal, Unitarian, Universalist, and Jewish denominations. These essays are independent. They have been written apparently without conference. Their unity, for the volume possesses a real unity, is that of the spirit. And just because they are independent and represent widely different denominations, they will afford to the interested reader a good illustration both of the spirit and methods of the newer thinking. We wish, however, that the writers had kept more clearly in mind the lay reader, and had presented their views of religious philosophy somewhat less in the terms of the theological thinker and more in the terms of spiritual experience.

has motor adventures which more or less justify the title. The book is amusing and its action moves vivaciously.

Misadventures of Joseph (The). By J. J. Bell. The F. H. Revell Company, New York. $1.

Joseph Redborn is, in his way, a better creation than "Wee Macgreegor," who made Mr. Bell famous. Joseph is a village painter, dry, canny, given to quaint philosophy, but also kindly and generous even to rivals and enemies. The tale of his doings and sayings is full of fun with a real touch of tenderness and sympathy.

Saturday's Child. By Kathleen Norris. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50.

Mrs. Norris is not afraid of normal human life; she has not lost faith in the power of wholesome experiences to supply all the material essential for dramatic interest; she has more than once proved her case, and has invested very simple situations with deep and beautiful meaning. It is not necessary to be a bad woman in order to be a significant and charming woman, nor is immorality the only road to the dramatic in life. It isn't even necessary to make a "career" in order to fulfill the possibilities of life; it is quite possible to be respectable and entertaining, to keep out of the newspapers and make life impressively and strikingly successful.

Mrs. Norris deals with normal people in normal conditions; there is nothing esoteric about her work; its interest is the interest of life clearly seen and faithfully reported. This story of a working-girl in San Francisco is realistic in detail and romantic in temper. The way of things in a boarding-house is made

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Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves. McBride, Nast & Co.,
New York. $1.50.

The puzzle is how seriously to take these "revelations" of a man who claims to have been employed (under the assumed name he now signs) for many years in the German secret service. It is a fact that a man of that name was arrested, tried, and convicted as a German spy in Great Britain three years ago; an account of the proceedings appeared in English papers of the time. "Dr. Graves" claims that his arrest was secretly plotted by the German Government, who felt that he knew too much. He was released, he says, after a few weeks, and questions asked about the matter in Parliament were refused an answer. "Dr. Graves declares that, convinced of Germany's perfidy, he took service as a British secret agent, but soon after having reached New York he resigned.

The stories he tells are extraordinary. To take one instance, he tells of a secret meeting in the Black Forest, under his personal management, of great statesmen of England (Winston Churchill and Lord Haldane), Germany, and Austria (their representatives are named also, and are of high rank and importance), in which an informal coalition is formed against Russia. Not a happy hit, this, as things have turned out, but a vivid piece of narrative. Even the Kaiser is introduced in person more than once, and a thrilling story is told of how he and Dr. Graves prevented the Agadir incident from causing war. One almost hopes that the narratives are fiction, because they are so good as fiction. Mr. E. P. Oppenheim could not have done better! In fact, one suspects them of being a fascinating and exciting combination of fact and fiction.

War. By W. Douglas Newton.

& Co., New York. $1.20.

Dodd, Mead

This is not a novel, but it has all the interest of fiction; it is not a record of fact, but it reads so like current history that many of its chapters seem like reprints from the newspapers. The colossal struggle in Europe gives it not only a timely but a tragical interest. It describes the unfolding of an invasion described as an eyewitness saw it until he is shot for having tried to save the woman he loves from the supreme outrage that can be committed upon a woman.

The story is told in detail and with graphic skill. It gains in effectiveness by reason of its

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dispassionate tone; no attempt at moralization is made, nor is any characterization of war necessary; its cold, merciless cruelty, its essential and ruthless brutality, its inevitable savagery, are brought home by the scientific intelligence with which the campaign is conducted, and the scientific temper of the commanders who direct it. In its best estate war is savagery used by trained men. The story is reeking with blood, as the newspapers would be if they were permitted to report the details of the battles recently fought on Belgian and French soil. It is realistic or it would be worthless, and the be read comes not from the book but from the repulsion with which some of its chapters will events which it describes. Such books as this are not pleasant reading, but life over a great section of Europe is now like this story; it is so horrible that it is incredible, but there is no escape from the facts.

News, Ads, and Sales: The Use of English for Commercial Purposes. By John B. Opdycke. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25. It is an experiment which seems well worth trying that Mr. Opdycke formulates in this book. His experiment is the use of the American newspaper as the subject of a course of study for high school and college freshman pupils. His book is offered as the text-book of such a course. Mr. Opdycke is Chairman of the English Department of the Julia Richman High School of New York City.

Mr. Opdycke discusses and illustrates the newspaper in all its departments-editorial, business, and mechanical. He gives his idea of newspaper ethics, of how a forceful advertisement should be written and printed, and of what the physical appearance of the high-class newspaper should be. He suggests that the study of the newspaper is a good thing in itself, and that while the student is learning what a newspaper is he will also be learning twentiethcentury business English. "A few years ago," says Mr. Opdycke in his Foreword, "it was more or less necessary for a teacher of English to apologize when he mentioned commercial English. He stood in fear of the 'culturists.' Now the live, efficient teacher of English must apologize if he does not mention it, the 'culturists' notwithstanding. He has no quarrel with those who argue for the classics; he believes in the classics too, but this belief does not move him to disbelieve in commercial and industrial English. He recognizes the two as different, not as antagonistic, each with a place peculiarly, even exquisitely, its own. Indeed, he is almost ready to say that they are complementary one to another."

Open Roads of Thought in the Bible and in Poetry By Rev. T. H. Wright. Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, Edinburgh.

This volume from the Scots manse in Dresden is made up of selections from the poets in lines of thought upon human life and destiny,

reverberations of the teaching of the Bible from human hearts. These are taken mainly from Dante and modern British poets, and are accompanied with judicious comments, mainly interpretative.

Ritual and Belief. By Edwin Sidney Hart

land, F.S.A. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $3. These studies in the history of religion are in the line taken by anthropology, the science of man, in its inquiry into the beginnings of religion. This takes us back to the primitive state of mankind, in which a characteristic trait of religion appears in its rudimentary form of a vague but real belief in unseen superhuman powers. These essays by an eminent member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science take up the subject at the mooted points to which it has been carried by such distinguished investigators as Sir Edward Tylor, Andrew Lang, Professor Frazer, and others, French and American-the relations of religion and magic. Which is prior? What is their difference?

The conclusion here drawn is that they spring from a common root "in man's emotional response to his environment, his interpretation in the terms of personality of the objects which encountered his attention, and in their investiture by him with potentiality." Originally interwoven and indistinguishable, they show opposite tendencies as civilization advances. Religion subordinates individual interests to social. Magic is employed for individual and anti-social ends. Hence its increasing reprobation as ethical religion develops. Ritual and belief, whether religious or magical, are elaborated and organized together.

Essays on "The Boldness of the Celts," "The Haunted Widow," "The Philosophy of Mourning Clothes," "The Rite at the Temple of Mylitta," and "The Voice of the Stone of Destiny" exhibit, with comments, a great mass of primitive ritual and belief, on which the foregoing conclusions are based. Strange, absurd, or shocking as they are, their vestiges survive in modern civilization-a case of "the haunted widow" in 1912 at Macon, Georgia, is cited. Magic has not yet been wholly purged out of modern Christianity. "The fact is," says the essayist, "that on these [religious and metaphysical] subjects the majority of the human race, whether savage or civilized, think little. Their minds are seldom excited to the point of reasoning on their beliefs."

Constructive Basis for Theology (A). By James

Ten Broeke, Ph.D. The Macmillan Company, New
York. $3.

A solid contribution is this of Professor Ten Broeke to the groundwork on which many thinkers are now engaged. The basis of theology being God as the ultimate Reality beneath all phenomena, it can be really constructive only in so far as it provides adequate ground for the demands of our intellectual, social, and religious life. This truth Dr. Ten Broeke as

sumes at the outset. His discussion leads up to the conception of God as "a Life objectifying itself in a world-order and a kingdom of selves." He comes to this through an elaborate critical review of the history of speculative thought upon theological doctrines. To this also points Jesus' thought of God as Spirit, Father, and Sovereign of a spiritual kingdom. "In the consciousness of Jesus himself," says Dr. Ten Broeke, "the reality of Christianity is to be found." To this he appeals from systems of the remote and recent past as the norm of present-day theology, and both from theologians who yield too much to scientists, and scientists who claim more than belongs to them. "What a relief it is," he exclaims, "to turn from bewildering soteriologies to the divine Saviourhood which Jesus taught !" The constructive principle of Dr. Ten Broeke's theology is the divine immanence in man and nature. But to say," Transcendence and immanence are spatial conceptions," seems quite inconsistent with his thought of God as a self-conscious, self-determining Personality having his life in and through a world-order and a kingdom of selves, a social unity who is the Father of spirits." In the influence of spirit on spirit personality is essentially dynamic and nonspatial. Professor Ten Broeke's philosophy of the constructive basis of theology is in close agreement generally with that of Eucken. Demosthenes and the Last Days of Greek Free

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dom, 384-322 B. C. (Heroes of the Nations Series.) G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $1.50.

The subject of this fresh volume in the series of Heroes of the Nations is the statesman and orator whose claim to be ranked among the heroic men of the past "rests above all on the constancy and sincerity with which he defended the noblest cause known to the Greeks-that of Hellenic liberty." He failed, but came near worsting his antagonist, the war lord Philip of Macedon. His present biographer, an eminent Oxford scholar, attributes his failure chiefly to the "deep-seated jealousy of able men which characterized Athenian democracy, its inability in the presence of strong foes to accept aristocracy of those who have the power to think, to foresee, to plan, and to command." Our own wise men have reminded us that the success of democracy in the conduct of momentous interests depends on its ability and willing. ness to avail itself of expert counsel.

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This volume, based on a critical study of original authorities, is a valuable monograph on the decline and fall of the Athenian state in the fourth century B. C. Its last great pillar is the central figure in the tragic drama. His faults are not spared, his unjust aspersions on Æschines, his rival, are rebutted. Judging him by the standards of his time, his biographer regards his defects as more than redeemed by his dauntless passion for a great cause and his selfabsorbing devotion to a noble ideal.

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