Book Reviews

186 Janeway's new book, The Econ omics of Crisis: War, Politics and the Dollar (Weybright and Talley, $10.00), is a mixed historical and journalistic coup. It takes off from Randolph Bourne's wholly repel lent but wholly accurate observa tion that "war is the health of the state." It follows from this that the peaceful development of coun tries is dependent on what has been done to expand the economy in wartime. War, says Janeway, can be a mighty stimulus to na tion building, but the proviso is that it must be waged by men of reasonable intelligence who can be cold-blooded about the payoff. Janeway himself is as cold bloodedly realistic as Sancho Panza himself. His book is an ex plosively interacting multiple of four observations. The first obser vation is that America's wars, prior to the one in which· we are now engaged, have all been profit able. Observation Number Two is 1968 WAR, POLITICS, AND THE DOLLAR 187 that Europe and Asia haven't been as lucky in their wars, though there have been ~xceptions. Obser vation Number,f'hree,taken from Norman AngeII'-s Tile Great Illu sion, is that imperialism lost its realistic sanction when it ceased to be a simple matter of looting. And the fourth observation is that wars are no longer needed as a gigantic prod to production pro vided that mass consumption can be stimulated by the political man agement of continental-size econ omies.

Profitable Wars When he is exploring the impli cations of the first three of his ob servations, Janeway is entirely convincing. The American Revolu tion was mismanaged from a monetary standpoint, but when the soldiers were paid off in west ern land scrip it gave a mighty impetus to the westward expan sion. The War of 1812 was· some thing of a stand-off, but it did get the British and their Indian allies off our backs in the Detroit region, which meant that settlers could sleep in their beds. The Mexican War rounded out our continental shape, and the Civil War preserved the new geographical configura tion for the continental market that grew up with the building of the railroads. The Spanish-Ameri can War, with its action in the Caribbean and the Philippines and the dash of the Oregon around Cape Horn, dramatized the need for the Panama Canal. And our three truly distant wars - World War I, World War II, and the Korean War - were forcing houses for the development of our tech nological economy.

Meanwhile, Europe and Asia suffered b.ecause of their inability to evade wartime destruction and tremendous casualties. Some of Britain's colonial wars were cheaply fought, and Bismarck put the German Empire together by easy victories over Austria and Denmark. But the Franco-Prus sian War proved a disappointment to the Germans, and the two world wars were devastating to all of their European participants. Another Story in Vietnam So Janeway lets his observa tions take him down to the pres ent. It might be argued that, since the Vietnam War is far away, it can't hurt us much. But this is a war that we are fighting alone. It is a costly war financially, but, curi ously, it isn't leading to any sig nificant industrial expansion. The war is, at the moment of writing, too small to permit controls, but not small enough to avoid mone tary inflation. Meanwhile, the Soviets feed just enough support to their North Vietnamese allies 188 THE FREEMAN "A/arch to keep our casualties mounting without costing the life of a single Russian soldier. By bogging us down in Southeast Asia, the So viets have a free hand to adven ture in the eastern Mediterranean.

Janeway is certain that they will make the most of it. Thus we have lost the edge in "crisis management" to Moscow. In Janeway's estimation,' it was l\tIcNamara who misled Johnson into thinking the Vietnam War could be won with a limited com mitment. Johnson, in turn, was too secretive to take Congress into his confidence or to seek its advice and' he is now lost in the "jungles" of Vietnam and Detroit without the money needed to win on either the foreign or the home front. Weak on Welfarism The weak point of Janeway's book is its treatment of the rise of the Welfare State. He speaks of "Bismarck's Breakthrough," and adds a few pages on Lloyd George's "creative improvisations" which "translated" Bismarck's so cial legislation into English. The inference to be drawn from this sympathetic treatment of Bis marck as a primitive Keynesian planner is that the human race is now in possession of social instru ments which will allow it to feed everybody without resorting to the economics of war preparation.

To give Janeway his due, he is no devotee of the crude theory that "government investment" can solve all our troubles. He does not divide economics into "private" and "public" sectors. His particu lar brand of interventionism, though it is couched in neo-Keynes ian language, is fairly close to l\lilton Friedman's theory that the economy can be kept moving ahead in a state of dynamic equilibrium if the currency is expanded in a stable relationship to the increase in productivity. Janeway sees no virtue in the "public sector" as such, and he is all for increasing private fortunes provided they are profitably engaged. After all, if there is no flourishing private economy, the political managers would have no source of tax funds to take care of the strays. The trouble with the Bismarck Lloyd George theory of the social service state, however, is that it provides no assurance that a J ane way or a Milton Friedman will ever be allowed to work the levers.

Bismarckian "socialism" created a population that became all too de pendent on state action and state commands - and it wasn't much of a jump from Bismarck's theo ries to Hitler's National Social ism. Lloyd George's England nlerged insensibly into the Eng land of Beveridge cradle-to-grave planning, which certainly hasn't 1968 OTHER BOOKS 189 proved compatible with industrial prod ucti vity. As a hard-boiled reflection of "what is," the Janeway insistence' that politicians make the economic climate is all too true. But if there is no revulsion against the idea that economics must always be subservient to the compulsions of politics, the correct image for our productive system will remain that of the snake attempting to live by swallowing its tail. ~ ~ A PRIDE OF PREJUDICES by Verrnont Royster (New York: Al fred A. Knopf, 1967), 361 pp., $6.95. Reviewed by Robert M. Thornton READERS of The Wall Street Jour nal need little introduction to this collection of essays by the editor of that outstanding newspaper.

Many of these short pieces were selected from his occasional col umn, "Thinking Things Over," which is an especially bright spot even in that sparkling editorial page. In these days when many of our "spiritual leaders" are busy picketing, marching, and inciting to riot, it is in such unlikely places as this that one finds searching thought about the human condi tion. Royster is a throwback to earlier days of journalism when the in formal essayist delighted, in formed, and infuriated readers with his ruminations. He writes as a good conversationalist might talk on whatever topic comes to mind. Some event in the daily round supplies the 'inspiration, but the thought pursued leads far afield, reflecting the conceit that the reader's interest is as varied, intelligent, and literate as Roy ster's own. He writes, then, about what interests him, be the subject profound or trivial, philosophic or nostalgic, timely or timeless.

Royster once told an interviewer that he thought himself the most radical editor in the country, so out of step is he with the prevail ing mood of the body politic. He opposes the inflationary financial policies of the national govern ment and "the feeling that the government should feed our chil dren, build our houses, provide for our old age, take care of us when we are sick, and bury us when we die." At a time when statism is embraced by most of the molders of public opinion this is indeed a radical position. When Royster faced the prob lem of deciding who was to revie\v his book for The Wall Street Jour nal, he arrived at a very simple, yet daring, solution: he "re viewed" the book himself. Here was no self-praise or false mod190 THE FREEMAN March esty but as one man said, "about the most subtle mention of a book by its author I have ever seen." In the closing sentences of the "review" Royster describes the contents of his book. You will find inside, he writes, "some little es says on sundry subjects done in a quaint, meandering style. There are personality sketches of public persons that are de rigueur for a practicing journalist; the passing thoughts on weighty public ques tions that an editor must offer to keep his license; the reportage on affairs as distant as Kansas and India by which a reporter tests his craftsmanship.

"But there are also, you should be forewarned, essays of no great point or purpose. Nostalgia can be pleasant self-indulgence but others may not be moved by re membrances of yesterday's De pression or of wars past. The bor derline between sentiment and sentimentality is very narrow, and therefore easy to step over when recalling a .great-grandfather or dreaming over a grandchild. "Finally, one man's prejudice is another man's anathema. Cer tainly not everyone today will share the belief, expressed there in, that our heritage from the past contains many values worth con serving in the twentieth century. Or amid the troubles of the pres ent find comfort in the reminder that the Dark Ages lasted only five hundred years. "So perhaps the best thing to be said of the book is simply that Alfred Knopf thought it worth publishing." Most of Royster's "review" is taken up with praise for the out standing job of book-designing and book-making done by his pub lisher. "It looks good on a coffee table," he says "even if you never open it." Indeed it does, but great would be the loss of anyone who neglected to look between the covers. ~ ~ ON AGGRESSION by Konrad Lorenz, translated by Marjorie Kerr Wilson (New York: Har court, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), 306 pp. $5.75 ~ THE TERRITORIAL IMPERA TIVE by Robert Ardrey (New York: Atheneum, 1966), 390 pp.

$6.95 Reviewed by Gordon B. Bleil ROBERT ARDREY here assembles a vast amount of m,aterial from the works of natural scientists and adds his personal interpretation or more correctly, his extrapola tion. The work is tightly focused on the single subject of territorial ity. Territory is any area of space which an animal or group of ani mals defends as an exclusive pre1968 OTHER BOOKS 191 serve, and territoriality is the in ward compulsion to possess and defend such property. Ardrey notes in his introduction that only one book (a 1920 work) has been devoted entirely to territoriality and that one was about birds. But considerable material on the sub ject is tucked away in the, pages of scientific journals. Ardrey develops his thesis that man is a territorial animal linked firmly to his piece of earth, and he argues that male competition human as well as animal - is pri marily for possession of property, and only secondarily for posses sion of the female. This inquiry describes the physical behavior of many species, and also speculates on the emergence of values and natural morality among humans as concomitant phenomena.

Property as pivotal in affairs of men was acknowledged by our Founding Fathers and emphasized by political writers preceding them - as attested by the popular ity of such slogans as "Life, Lib erty, and Property." Of late the private property principle has not only been ignored, but aggressive ly attacked in the flight toward nonproperty social structures . . . welfarism, socialism, communism, and the like. Ardrey roots man's institutions in his biological heri tage and challenges those who at tribute our behavior solely to environment or culture, rejecting its hereditary basis. Konrad Lorenz is frequently re ferred to in Ardrey's work, but at the time Ardrey was writing, Lorenz's work had not been trans lated from the original German. It has since become available in Eng lish. Lorenz's focus is on aggression which he defines as "the fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species." A naturalist by pro fession and choice, Dr. Lorenz is also a doctor of medicine and a doctor of philosophy. From this solidly based vantage point he has considerable leverage on his bio logical materials and their human implications.

Somewhat less well structured and less readable than Ardrey's work, due in part, perhaps, to the difficulties of translation, Lorenz nevertheless provokes reflection. Territoriality is one of the causes of aggression, but not the only one. Aggressive behavior in the animal kingdom has evoked a par allel development. of reliable, inhib itory mechanisms which prevent a species from destroying itself. Man is unique in that he has developed enormous aggressive capabilities and destructive power without a parallel development of reliable, natural inhibitions. Lorenz finds aggression healthy, 192 THE FREEMAN March innate, and ineradicable. His prin cipal point is that the survival of mankind - considering the awe some destructive power now at our disposal - depends on our success in imitating the natural and re liable inhibitory mechanisms evolved by other organisms rather than trying to sweep aggression under the rug as immoral or cura able. This tack will not work be cause aggressive drives are a nec essary part of our nature.

Students of the free economy will be reassured to find effective natural principles at work in hu man nature itself, which are con sistent with the ideology of com petitive enterprise. We are better equipped to defend the market place, where competition is aimed at serving the consumer. If mankind eliminates competition or ad vocates its neutralization, at hazard is ultimate survival. It may be a sign of the times that con currently with the progress of socialism highly competitive phys ical-contact sports, such as foot ball, mushroom in popularity - a modern equivalent, so to speak, of bread and circuses. Fortunately for the serious stu dent, both works are heavily ref erenced and additional study in areas of particular concern is facil itated. Lorenz is slightly less de sirable in this aspect than Ardrey because much of his source ma terial, understandably, is in Ger man. Both books are likely to become well-thumbed by those who want a better understanding of why we are and what we are. ~ HANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX 12-ROD FREEMAN BINDERS $2.50 each Order from: THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION, INC.

IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 10533 VOLUME 18, NO.4 the Freeman in this issue APRIL 1968 "" Not the things of life, suggests John Sparks, but the people ought to be free . . ..p. 195 ~ And how better to use and develop one's freedom than through unre stricted travel? ....... p. 201 "" Henry Hazlitt adds a word in de fense of tourists and foreign investors .......... p. 205 "" Dr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn's practiced eye affords substantial insight into the economic, social, and political sit uation in Latin America ..... '" p. 207 "" Again, says Bill Dykes, let's first learn to dispose of our own garbage if we are truly concerned about others ...p. 216 "" Professor Carson reviews the his tory of pre-industrial England from which she was to emerge as a world power ...... p. 219 "" "Protect the leather industry! Then let us compete," is the way at least one man in the busi ness sees it ............ p. 232 "" Life isn't exactly a game of basket ball, concedes Gary North, but re spected rules and an honest referee can help in either case ...p. 237 "" Raymond Buker came a bit late for Christmas, but his point remains valid as of April 15 . .. .p. 247 ~ The Future of Conservatism by Stanton Evans affords this month's grist for "The Reviewer's Notebook"