ase for Our Culture What Is a By Howard Mum- Tyler emerges as the hero of this pp. Cambridge: section of the book, it must be Press. $3. Bureaucra remembered that it is since his S BAKER time that the quiet revolution in THE BUREAUCRAT. By John H. American scholarship has - inceton University 373 pp. Philadelphia: J. B. Lip curred. Many new vistas have Company. $3. who is dean been opened since Tyler laid aside duate School at his pioneering spade. By HENRY STEELE COMMA ty, here gathers Grounds for hope that these Prof. of History, Columbia Univ selection of his conditions will be corrected with- HOUGH bureaucracy sses of the last in a very few years are to be back to the eighteenth have as a com- found in "The Literary History of tury, Mr. Crider confines hi responsibility of the United States," a communal to the situation since 1933; t and educators work in progress to which Dr. bureaucracy may be four make generally Jones is himself contributing, and every State and- may as and deeper con- also in the intellectual history of -in every local governn native culture the American colonial period, a unit in the country, Mr. ( obtained, to the work now being undertaken at gives his attention exclusive ns may at last Harvard under the aegis of Mur- the Federal Government. ual age and re- dock, Miller and Jones. Mean- though bureaucracy can be rld and in the while the success of such partial in all departments of govern tiples of moral syntheses as that of Mr. Kazin (as well as in schools, chu at the roots of suggests that American scholar- labor unions, corporations periment. ship has not only come of age, other large organizations) cholarly without but is getting squared away to Crider concentrates on thos rtatory without register several new names at the partments or bureaus most He projects ade- polls. ly associated with the New ust with such and the war. as "The Ameri- T HE central part of the book What is bureaucracy? d makes plain contains five essays, of which Crider, who confesses tha b sound interest four are excellent examples of bureaucrat "defies precise mind is no rea- literary-cultural history as it nition," gives us only hum at mind against should be done. A fifth, "The descriptions: "bureaucracy culture." Renaissance and American Ori- graying of the hair of go a thoroughly gins," is a pleasant intellectual ment administration-the ha able, and often tidbit which could well have been ing of its arteries," etc. A d ent, book which refused admittance to such illus- tion, even a description, is, and example trious company as the essays on sure, a difficult matter. Web ed for a mature "The Origins. of the Colonial Dictionary tells us that bur our intellectual Idea," "American Prose Style: racy is "a system of govern story; (2) the 1700-1770," "The Drift to Liberal- by bureau chiefs, responsible splored or partly ism in the American Eighteenth to administrative officers i 1 in the history Century" and "The Influence of them, having complete I ica, and (3) the European Ideas in Nineteenth- over subordinates, and in of erican scholar- Century America." duties generally not subje e society which To summarize Dr. Jones' con- the common law of the 1 clusions is to do the richness of while Mr. Laski, in the En these four essays grave injustice. paedia of the Social Sciences ast quarter cen- It must suffice here to say that gests that it is "the term us in his view the colonial idea was applied to a system of go ican literature a by-product of English commer- ment the control of which us of respecta- cial rivalry with Spain; that be- completely in the hands of of respectable tween Cotton Mather's "Mag- cials that their power jeopar fact is at once nalia" and Franklin's "Autobiog- the liberties of ordinary citiz challenging. It raphy" a revolution in American If these definitions are righ serious study of prose style was effected; that have no bureaucracy in the ed States. al backgrounds "the problem of American ro- honeering stage. manticism cannot be solved mere- rk of an earlier ly by enumerating European in- OMETHING is to be sai he; much invalid fluences" but is referable rather applying the term, loosely, t g must be un- to the American habit of dissent ministrative officials in gene and to our characteristic preoccu- The Thinker. By Thomas Eakins. deal in the way though nothing for applyi esis remains to pation with moral issues; and only to Federal officials. E first time. The finally that European influence study of administration in ies, thinks Dr. on nineteenth-century America Money and the World eral, of the institution of the er area. comes to focus in two main areas: service, might be illuminati intations of the post-Napoleonic rationalism and POSTWAR MONETARY PLANS AND high merit, compact, pointed, properly done. Such a S which have the dynamic view of nature. OTHER ESSAYS. By John H. Wil- original. Even when most pro- would necessarily distin are of several T liams. XXXII + 297 pp. New York: vocative of dissent they are likely permanent from emergency thors who have HE concluding essays show Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. to enforce some change of orig- ministration, compare Fe uine syntheses that the author's heart, like his By JACOB VINER inal position on the part of the and State administration, eir value-judg- head, is in the right place. They dissenter. Outstanding in these ption of unliter- issue another of those stirring if Prof. of Economics, University of Chicago pare the civil service of Br essays are the author's efforts HIS is a collection of essays France and pre-war Ger . Examples are muted trumpet calls to a nation to avoid intellectual ruts, whether with that of the United S Hicks, Calverton which needs constantly to be re- on monetary policy and in- traditional or of his own making, and draw analogies from th mith to judge minded of the great ends for ternational trade theory, pub- and his struggle, not always suc- perience of non-political adr ure by the ex- which it was created. One such lished in various journals over cessful, to attain unorthodoxy. tration. of Marxism, or call occurs in "The American the years. Professor Williams is In economics, theories obso- Mr. Crider has not W Lewisohn to in- Scholar Once More." The shade an eminent authority in these lesce more often and more rap- about anything of this kin f Freud. Even of Emerson might well nod affir- fields and his contributions are idly because the questions which has not even given us ade ton's widely in- mation to the suggestion that "a weighty and thought-provoking. they were designed to answer are statistics of the Federal Currents in living core of interest around no longer of interest rather than The older essays are mostly tech- service. He has concerned t" is marred by which the liberal college could because new capacities or tools nical in nature and have been self, rather, with some phas socio-economic once more be given a vital unity of analysis, new knowledge, or carefully studied by his fellow- the administration of the hetic sensibility is the study and comprehension new insights, lead to detection or admittedly of American civilization." In the economists. But it was worth the OPA, the ICC, Govern of error in their inherent logic. while collecting them; they merit publicity, war history, farr stories are lim- proper hands it is not too much This has some application, I ministration, and other odd confined to the to hope that such a reorientation rereading and they help to reveal think, to Williams' frequent at- ends, with occasional obs century figures, could relate the macrocosm to the the presuppositions and the sys- tacks on "orthodox" economics. tions on the nature of the ions, or to cer- American microcosm in such a tem of thought underlying the What he succeeds in demonstrat- logical species known as bu (Matthiessen, way that both would come won- later essays. If Moses Coit derfully alive. These earlier essays are all of (Continued on Page 20) (Continued on Page 14) THE NEW YORK