DEPENDENT AMERICA: A STUDY OF THE ECO- NOMIC BASES OF
OUR EXTERNAL RELATIONS. By W. C. Redfield. (Williams -and Norgate. 10s. 6d.)-Mr. Redfield, sometime Secretary of Commerce for the United States, thinks that his fellow-citizens are unduly convinced of their country's complete self-sufficiency, and in a volume full of fascinating detail sets out the list of indispensables which North America cannot provide for itself in sufficient quantity', if at all. America's abounding prosperity has greatly in- creased her needs. How should the hundred per cent. American (or even the less pure) live without his motor-car ? But there is not enough rubber to go round. Everybody knows that ; but many of us did not know how far the modern world depends on the supply of shellac, produced by a small bug in India. It comes, for instance, into every telephone instrument and every phonograph record. Imagine America short of these in time of peace. In time of war, there is a schedule of thirty strategic essentials for the prosecution of war, which America cannot produce even in sufficiency for peace-time. The conclusion emphasized is, of course, that isolation leads
to descent, not to progress. If we are to advance it must be by a closer sense of unity with all men everywhere."
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