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THE Palmer House in Chicago was the setting on April 11, 12, 13, and 14, 1973, for the sixty-sixth annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. The meeting, which formally began on Wednesday evening and ended at noon on Saturday, attracted a large number of people (over 2,600 registrants and a total attendance of about 3,000 persons) in these times of academic austerity. The convention was presided over by T. Harry Williams, whose sparkling presidential address, the highlight of the assembly, was presented to a crowded and appreciative audience in the Grand Ballroom on Thursday evening.' The formal part of the program consisted of fifty-six sessions.2 The subjects treated, themes emphasized, and approaches considered in these sessions reflect the diversified interests of scholars now working in the field of United States history. The format of the sessions varied: thirty-two featured two formal papers, ten had three papers, and six were organized around a single paper. There were also eight workshops held between noon and 2:00 p.m. on Thursday and Friday. These were generally less formal than the

In this paper, an analysis of a review article in an Australian design magazine is undertaken using a selected model of architectural criticism. While the model is found to be restrictive in facilitating exploration of fundamental philosophical issues in interior design, it does reveal the potential of interior design criticism as a ground for further developing and defining interior design’s distinctive qualities and possibilities. The paper shows that a special aspect of the critical ground is its ability to accommodate oppositional concepts and through the tension in their proximity to provide for more constructive debate and exploration.

The conference theme ‘Between excess and austerity’ indicates a division which has shaped the discipline of interior design during the twentieth century. This paper is the outcome of a desire to open up this binary relation which continually dogs the practiceof interior design. The writings of Gilles Deleuze, in particular his attempt to ‘overturn Platonism’, are used as a tool to lever and open up possibilities for thinking differently. The immediate effect is that in between excess and austerity one encounters an ‘and’ – excess and austerity – hence the title of the paper ‘di-vision/ double vision’. Rather than between or either/or, it is both. This produces a blurring of vision which problematises the distinction made between interior design and interior decoration based on questions of excess and austerity as one equated with ornamentation versus the essentialism of a minimal aesthetic. This paper considers three familiar modernist surfaces from the twentieth century. Looking through glasses provided by the writings of Deleuze, the Platonic nature of the surfaces is apparent but so too are other ways of viewing these surfaces – division becomes di-vision or double vision and the possibilities for other ways of thinking and doing proliferate. The question of excess and austerity shifts from one of ‘to decorate or not?’ to one where the binary is blurred and the between becomes ‘and’ rather than a between of moderation. This involves an epistemological shift from a search for essences and ideals to an encounter with surfaces where meaning and events happen in which the proliferating intensity of life can be both austere and excessive.

China and the Soviet Union adhered to a common development design, aptly called by some the Stalinist strategy of economic development.' The strategy is one of selective growth under conditions of austerity.2 Selectivity is taken to be in favor of the "modern heavy industrial sector," whose absolute size, as Moscow and Peking see it, constitutes the principal determinant of national power. The strategy relegates the role of agriculture to that of an instrument and food production to that of an intermediate good. To be sure, even with Stalin, consumption must remain the ultimate goal of production. But the long view implicit in his strategy in no way negates the validity of Bergson's epigrammatic statement that for any relevant planning period under consideration "steel was a final good to Stalin, and bread an intermediate one."3 At the same time, a policy of growth under austerity renders inoperative the income-demand mechanism implicit in the ordinary two-sector models. The modified two-sector model relevant to the Stalinist setting departs significantly from the well-known Kuznetsian framework of considering agricultural development in terms of its factor, product, and market contributions to general growth. This in turn compromises the theoretical foundation for evaluating agricultural policy on the basis of a simple output test.4 Thus, to gain insight into policy-making and to appraise comparative performance in the agriculture of the two countries under review, it is necessary to develop first a framework that incorporates the salient analytical coordinates of the Stalinist model as well as the technical and economic realities of the settings. The purposes of this paper are several-fold: * This paper draws in part on a larger study [17] prepared for the SSRC Conference on the Economy of Mainland China. Additional research was made possible by a summer grant from Vanderbilt University. Clerical assistance was provided by the Economic Research Center of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where the author visited during 1966-67.

When considering the growing interest in the ideas of internationalisation and globalisation, the phrase ‘Japanese Design’ has always captured the inspirational pulse of designers. This paradoxical world of Japan provides the impetus for vast and varied design outcomes. These outcomes range from the traditional design of tearooms, to the youth fashion phenomena in Harajuku. Design in Japan demonstrates a controlled approach to the subtle nuances that express the design spectrum between excess and austerity. This paper explores the idea of the intricacy of Japanese design as not only being a clear expression of their masterful handling of material and form, but also a demonstration of the amalgamation of cultural paradigms displayed in these various design outcomes. This is no more clearly expressed than in the examination of details used within Japanese design, in particular, the details in traditional Japanese architecture. The methodology involved with this research is mainly focussed on literature reviews of text and journal articles, as well as, review of appropriate exhibitions. But the original journey began years ago with my own education and exposure to the ideas of Japanese design and architecture. Numerous travel tours and design tours to Japan helped to reinforce the connection and unfold their paradoxical world.

IN the course of a paper(') published in' Scrutiny', December 1936, on the peculiar interest and importance of the position occupied by the music of Bernard van Dieren, I drew certain parallels between the music of Busoni and that of van Dieren and of Erik Satie which offer considerable opportunity for development. I pointed out the curious quality of solitariness and austerity which distinguishes the music of these composers, the result of their honesty and integrity, and hence of their inevitable hostility to an environment that is inimical to the finer and maturer living which the arts demand. I then made a comparison between Satie's remarkable and beautiful ' Socrate '-the almost completely impersonal musical demonstration of a psychological impasse, " the music of solitude " existing timelessly and spacelessly-and the work of Busoni, music which is rather the product of one particular extremely intelligent and sentient man of the modern world who is conscious of the

IN THIS PAPER I shall first discuss some semantical and "institutional" aspects of "the discipline of the balance of payments," and then I shall proceed to some ideas of my own concerning the present balance-ofpayments situation of the United States. Three phrases are in use concerning the effects which movements in the balance of payments may have on the domestic monetary situation: "the balance-of-payments mechanism," "the rules of the game," and "the discipline of the balance of payments." I have noticed a tendency to use the three phrases interchangeably for the same notion, and I deplore this as a waste of words. To use different words for the same thing and have no words for other things is a wasteful allocation of linguistic resources. Each of the three phrases can have its own meaning. The balanceof-payments mechanism should refer to some automatic effects, not to policy decisions. After all, this is what mechanism means: it works "mechanically," not through discretion. The automatic effects in question are upon bank reserves, an inflow of gold or foreign exchange causing bank reserves to fall. This mechanism works even in the absence of a central bank if private banks -hold gold and foreign-exchange reserves. The rules of the gold-standard game refer to norms for central-bank policies. To abide by the rules is to abstain from policies of offsetting, and to pursue policies of reinforcing, the effects of the balance-of-payments mechanism. A central bank obeys the rules of the game if it expands credit and buys securities when gold and foreign exchange are received and if it contracts credit and sells securities when gold and foreign reserves are lost. Now it would not be unreasonable to use the word discipline for the exactitude with which the rules of the game are obeyed; but it is preferable to use it instead for the stern austerity with which a nation practices anti-inflationary or deflationary policies when a balance-ofpayments deficit has arisen or threatens to arise. Thus, while the rules of the game may prescribe expansionary or contractionary policies, as the case may be, I would use the term

pOSTWAR Japan is deeply obsessed with the "export or expire" kind of fatalism, in spite of the remarkable manifestations of economic recovery from the devastating effects of World War II. The end of the boom due to the Korean war drove home the realization that Japan depends more than ever on external trade for internal viability as well as for co-prosperity with other nations. Thus we find the Japanese Diet (parliament), the press, and the economics profession all joining in a grim debate on "import austerity," "disinflation," "yen devaluation," and "China trade" as possible remedies for the post-Korean dollar and sterling gaps 1 a debate reminiscent of Britain's prior to the I949 devaluation.2 However, Japan's balance of payments difficulties are far more deeply rooted than short-range policy discussions would indicate. For this reason I shall endeavor, in this paper, to discuss Japan's trade position in the context of the changed structure of the Japanese economy and with reference to the shifting pattern of world trade. Such a discussion may also throw useful light on the general problems of foreign trade and economic development in postwar conditions.

There are many aspects of the recovery plans for Norway that justify careful study. In terms of the proportion of national product being devoted to investment the Norwegian program is the most ambitious in Western Europe. This high level of investment is being accepted by the people of the country despite widespread recognition of the consequent severe reduction in the standard of living. General elections in the fall of 1949 indicated wholehearted acceptance of the austerity necessary to carry out the reconstruction and development plans. Lack of communist strength and absence of internal disorder provide encouraging demonstration of the ability of democratic government to deal with difficult economic problems under existing world conditions. But in certain respects the Norwegian recovery effort differs from those of the other Marshall plan countries. Norway, with its population of something over 3,000,000 people, is a sparsely settled country. It still has many undeveloped resources, particularly its potential hydro-electric capacity and the associated chemical and non-ferrous metal industries. Real recovery for the Norwegian economy, therefore, will not be a return to a pre-war level but rather a development which makes more effective use of its resources. Before 1939 Norway had a surplus on the international balance of payments which was enabling her steadily to reduce the net debt to foreign countries which had accumulated during the earlier period of capital investment from abroad. Foreign trade played a very important part in the Norwegian economy as demonstrated by the fact that just before the war the value of her import of goods equalled slightly more than one-fourth of her national product of approximately 4,550,000,000 kroner.' Particularly important in securing the favorable balance of payments was the income earned by her merchant marine. In 1938 these receipts amounted to 689,100,000 kroner, while export of goods (including ships) was only 785,300,000 kroner.2 The most important exports were metals and ores, fish and fish products, pulp and paper, and fertilizer. The more significant imports included grains, coal, steel, petroleum products, textiles, machinery, and ships. The war caused a very heavy loss in Norway's capital equipment. The gross tonnage of her merchant fleet dropped from 4,900,000 in 1939 to 2,700,000 at the end of the war.3 The only significant coal mines were totally destroyed. The main iron ore plants at Syd-Varanger were completely wrecked, and the 1948