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We are witnessing today in both Europe and America the breakdown of what may be called the nineteenth-century equilibrium, and at the same time the effort to work out a new equilibrium as a basis of life for the twentieth century. The New Deal is the American phase of this movement. We can understand it better if we view it with the search-light of the movements in other countries, and if we make clear to ourselves what is driving them, how they are being driven, and what problems are in their path. The key to recent social developments seems to me to lie in the resurgence of the middle classes. This is a development of the last decade or so, and is largely the result of the failure of the two other major social groups-the capitalists and the workers-to give Western society, especially Western European society, leadership and direction. On the one hand, the capitalistic groups, while concentrating industrial and financial resources, showed a sad incapacity to establish a leadership based on social needs and moral values. On the other, the working classes, after having reached a position-not here, but in Western Europe-of great strength and influence, proved unable either to achieve enough numerical or social predominance to assume the hegemony of the state or to impose by force the program of socialism which they had preached for half a century. It was in this social impasse that the transformation in the character of the middle classes showed itself. These classes had already been given their first rude jolt by the World War and its aftermath. They had already been made to realize that they were extremely vulnerable, that they could be wiped out by inflation, expropriated by proletarians, and socially devaluated by everybody. For a while it looked as if they were done for in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. What seemed to loom up before them was a Hobson's choice of either a proletarian dictatorship after the pattern of Soviet Russia or a super-capitalism based on monopolistic cartels in which also they ultimately would be crushed. It was in reaction to both these alternatives that the middle classes began again to bid for national leadership as they had done during the French Revolution and in the early part of the nineteenth century. They defied with new energy the challenge of the proletariat and the mastery of big capital. This, as I see it, is the essential factor in

In September and October 1935, Mr. Lewis L. Lorwin, Economic Adviser, International Labour Office, formerly with the Brookings Institution, Washington, D. C., and Mr. A. Abramson, Member of the General Information Section, International Labour Office, had the opportunity of visiting the U.S.S.R. This article is a record of some of the information which they gathered and of the observations made during this visit. The Review offers this article to its readers in view of the interest in economic and social development in the Soviet Union. The article is not intended to give a comprehensive view of conditions in the Soviet Union, but merely an account of some of the striking changes now taking place. It is of course to be regarded as the expression of the personal views of the writers.

The international labor movement, over a hundred years old, is embodied in the associations of trade unions and other labor organizations in dif ferent countries that are formed for mutual aid and joint action in matters of common interest. The history of the movement is sketched by the author. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions, and the World Federation of Trade Unions are the three general organizations which are now active in the field, together with a number of International Trade Secretariats and regional organizations. The pro grams of work, organization, and financing of these various agencies are de scribed.—Ed.

FOR several months now, we have been witnessing one of the most dramatic-some would say most pathetic-spectacles in recent world history. After many preliminary negotiations, careful preparation of the agenda, and world-wide discussion of the exigencies of the situation, delegates from sixty-six nations assembled in the city of London to promote world recovery have not only been unable to make progress towards the end which they set themselves but have seemingly been drifting further apart in opposite directions. Those who have a vested interest or an acquired taste in sowing the seeds of international disharmony have been jubilant -and rightly so. Few international gatherings in the last decade and a half-which have not been models of international amityhave presented such a picture of strain and of working at crosspurposes. These facts are leading a growing number of people to the conclusion that the World Economic and Monetary Conference at London proves once again the impossibility of world cooperation and marks the end of efforts to obtain it. We are being exhorted by these newly converted nationalists to abandon all hope of following the path of international understandings and to accept cheerfully the alternative of each nation pursuing its own course in its own way, regardless of the rest of the world. Men and women who but a few years ago were proud of their international outlook are now confessing the presumed error of their judgment and asking us to follow them to the other extreme of economic nationalism and national self-sufficiency. But are these conclusions justified? Despite the growing literature on the need and value of national self-sufficiency, as opposed to world cooperation, the statement of this dilemma seems to be entirely false. The question before mankind today is not national self-sufficiency or world unity. To state the problem in the terms of such an alternative is to misread the facts of world economy and to misinterpret the currents of world history. The prob