Economic Problems of Peace titter War : the W. Stanley
Jevons Lectures at University College, London, in 1918. By W. R. Scott. Second Series. (Cambridge University Press. 6s. net.)—There is always ..a risk attendant upon the publication of lectures in book form, for the qualities which go to make a good lecture are by no means identical with those required for a good book. For this reason Dr. Scott would probably have done more wisely if, instead of republishing his lectures, he had used the excellent material in them as the basis for a book. These essays deal with such subjects as the proposed League of Nations, the question whether war should be financed by loans or by taxes, the suggested conscription of capital, and the problems of financial transition after the war. The author also touches upon the interesting if novel question of the rights of different nations to the air above their territory, and asks whether we are to have a mare liberum and an aer clauses. On the question of the proposed conscription of capital Dr. Scott deals trenchantly with the folly of the Socialists who speak as if the only people who benefit by past accumulations of wealth are the present owners of inherited property. As J. S. Mill pointed out in a passage which Dr. Scott quotes, all the conveniences of modern locomotion, all the triumphs of modern manufacturing methods, were due to Capital, and are the heritage not of landowners or capitalists only but of the whole nation.
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