The Quarterly Journal of Economics (Volume 36) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: REVIEWS CHARLES RIST ON GERMANY'S WAR FINANCES Professor Rist's new book is a notable survey of an important subject. True, the time is not ripe for an exhaustive study. Essential German data are not yet available. Intensive studies by competent German economists must precede a complete and perfect appraisal. We are yet too near to the war, too much under the influence of the war's emotions, to attain at all points the truest perspective. But we need, while the experience is still fresh in our memories, competent preliminary studies of war-time policies and theories ? those of belligerents and neutrals alike; the more because so many lessons which it should teach are sorely needed in the painful return to normal conditions. Such a preliminary study Professor Rist has written; it is the best which the reviewer has seen for any country, and, for its intended readers, it will rank as a model of its kind.2 The book is an outgrowth of the writer's activity as an associate of Professor Lichtenberger in editing war documents. In this capacity he followed, day by day for four years, the course of events in Germany and the expressions of German economic thought. Probably no one today, at least outside of Germany, can speak with equal command of the relevant literature. Furthermore, as economists do not need to be reminded, Professor Rist approached his task with the invaluable background of an intimate understanding of thedevelopment ? and vagaries ? of economic thought over the past century and a half. The novel and peculiar problems of the war brought about, in every country, a continuous struggle of conflicting theories, and the right ones did not always triumph. Hence the analysis of economic opinions must be an integral part of any comprehensive examination of war policies....