THE WORLD'S ECONOMIC FUTURE By A. Loveday and - Others "
What seems to me to give special value to this series," says Mr. D. H. Robertson in his appetising introduction to this collection of Halley Stewart lectures (Allen and Unwin, 4s. 6d.), " is the way in which analysis and speculation are made to grow out of strict attention to the facts of the con- temporary world." Reading the essays of the five distinguished contributors, one cannot but agree. There is little attempt at exhaustiveness, and little specific prophecy upon the prospects of this or that industry, the eventual merits of this or that economic scheme. But if the speculations are cast in general terms, they are generally based on a specific foundation. Mr. Loveday, dealing with problems of economic insecurity, refuses to " paint a word-picture of some unseen horizon," but he draws with sure strokes a meteorological chart of those changing winds which are driving us. Professor Condliffe equally renounces any claim to prophecy ; but his analysis of the shifting distribution of economic power at least delimits the range of future possibilities. Professor Ohlin, con- sidering the future economic organisation of society, has a keen eye on the present and the past ; favouring neither the lopsided anarchy miscalled perfect competition nor the bureaucratic rigidity of an over-centralised planned society, he hopes to see rationalised and extended the principles behind town planning—" the best example of a flexible form of centralised control." Professor Heckscher gives a lightning survey and keen appraisal of current changes in industrial structure and in commercial policy, and of the intellectual assumptions on which these are based. Finally Senor Madariaga, in an essay of quite breath-taking brilliance, speculates on the development of economic thought itself, compares it with the physical sciences, and relates it to political theory, thus providing a striking climax to a valuable and stimulating little volume.
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