Why War?—An International Series of Open Letters, No. 2: Albert Einstein—Sigmund Freud. (International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, Paris, 1933. Pp. 57. Price 6 s.)

An expression of opinion from two such distinguished authorities on a topic of such current and fundamental importance should arouse widespread interest. The booklet is published by the League of Nations, Institut International de Coopération Intellectuelle, and consists of an open letter from Professor Einstein to Professor Freud, with the latter's reply.

Einstein gives a very clear exposition of the problem, so much so that Freud in his reply jokingly complains that he has 'taken the wind out of his sails'. He sees clearly that a super-national tribunal could not be expected to succeed without having the power to enforce its arbitration: in other words, that might and law must go hand in hand. At this point he encounters the reluctance of nations to surrender a measure of their sovereignty and ascribes this to the political 'power hunger' of the ruling classes. They possess the power to bend the majority by their control of the Press and in other ways, but he asks a question of what latent predispositions exist in this majority to which the ruling powers can so successfully appeal. He puts the straight question to Freud: Can the latent lust for destruction be deflected into less dangerous powers than that of war?

Freud in his reply first traces the genesis of the sense of right. This began with a discovery that the many can by combining overcome the one, but he points out that there would occur only a repetition of the cycle of overcoming the ruler unless some permanent and organised union of the community was brought about. From this dates the reign of law. The inevitable inequalities of mankind, however, leads to attempts to extend this law by the impulse towards equality, so that the possibilities of peaceful solutions make steady progress—at all events within the same community. He agrees with Einstein about the connection between might and law. 'There is but one sure way of ending war and that is the establishment, by common consent, of a central co