SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading us notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other forms.] Political Socialism : a Remonstrance. Edited by Mark H. Judge. (P. S. King and Co. 1s. net.)—In this volume we have two Presidential addresses—it is a manifesto of the British Con- stitution Association—and essays, letters, etc., by various authors on questions which are being discussed in the world of politics. Among these questions are municipal trading, unemployment,•pay, ment of Members of Parliament, State feeding of children. All have been dealt with, and not once only, in the Spectator, and it would be useless to attempt even the briefest repetition of our arguments, One or two specimen facts, &c., may be given. At Bradford £1,323 was spent on providing meals for children, and .e3 Os. 3d. recovered from parents. In Paris, where necessitous children have free meals and others pay for what they have, the propor- tions of the free to the paid for began by being one-third to two- thirds (in 1880), and had come in 1905 to be two-thirds to one- third. In the matter of the payment of Members, the suggestion is made that a constituency should have power to rate itself for the support of its Member. The sum would be trifling—ten thousand electors would have to pay eightpence each, while the choice so made would carry a distinct honour with it. Not less effective, it may be, than the exposition of sound principles of Individualism, would be a statement of what the Collectivists propose. Such a policy as that which suggests the repudiation of the National Debt and the raising of vast loans to set the new order going needs only to be stated.
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