ote that one of the most telling books on
social reconstruction published since the war is by an international
writer. This is Dr. Walther Rathenau, a German of Jewish descent, whose
ideas have just been popularized by a Frenchman, M. Gaston Raphael[1].
He fits in well with our general argument by virtue of his double
attitude, holding, on the one hand, that under the general supervision
of the State, industry should be organized in various self-governing
groups, 'Social Guilds' or 'professional syndicates' in which both
employers and workmen would be included with representatives of the
Government; while, on the other hand, he is emphatic that progress must
proceed from a changed and widening mentality, and aim in turn at
increasing the depth and capacity of the individual soul.

Our book has no special chapter on the League of Nations itself. The
idea pervades the whole, and the subject was treated in detail in the
first volume of this series (_The Unity of Western Civilization_, 1915).
The history behind the League offers a striking analogy to the other
struggles for unity of which we have spoken. There is the same advance
from the idea of a unity dictated and controlled by one mind to a unity
of spirit arising from the free co-operation of many diverse elements
all aiming at the same general good. Down even to yesterday it seemed to
many minds a necessary condition that one man, gathering in his hands
the resources of one great State, should from that centre dominate the
world. And in the dawn of human history it was no doubt often true, the
only way in which the world could then advance. This was true for
Alexander, the prototype of all the Roman conquerors, and true,
conspicuously, for the Roman empire at its best. But, after the break-up
of the empire, unity of this type became a delusive mirage, misleading
all who, like the Holy Roman emperors, sought to enjoy it again. By the
time of Napoleon it had become an anachronism of the most dangerous and
reactionary kind. The world was then too vast, the freedom of men and
nations too various and deeply rooted. Meanwhile a real unity, stronger
than before, had been forming beneath the surface and needed fresh
institutions to body it forth. This movement for unity has been, as we
have seen, precipitated by the war into visible and decisive action. It
had been simmering for three hundred years in 'Great Designs', 'Projects
of Peace', Treaties of Arbitration, and Hague Con