Thorstein Veblen
Review author of: The Ruling Caste and Frenzied Trade in Germany. By MAURICE 
MILLIOUD (Introduction by Sir FREDERICK POLLOCK). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 
1916. 12mo, pp. 159. $1.25.
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 24, No. 10. (Dec., 1916), pp. 1019-1020.
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[1019] The volume is made up of two essays: "To an Understanding of the Ideology 
of Caste," and "Germany's Aims at Conquest by Trade and by War." It is a study 
in imperialism, of wider application than the special case of Germany with which 
it deals, and on which it draws for its analysis of modern policy. M. Millioud 
asks his readers "to believe that I have written these pages without being 
influenced by prejudice, with the one desire to get at the facts" (p. 20); but 
few unprejudiced [1020] readers, if such there are, could be permitted that such 
an attitude of scholarly detachment has been maintained through the course of 
the discussion. Throughout the analysis and its conclusions the case of Germany 
is made to stand out as a thing apart; whereas it should be plain from the 
description of its characteristics that it is only entitled to take rank as the 
consummate type-form of its species. What the facts cited entitle us to say is 
rather that Germany has bean affected with an aggravated case of imperialism, 
accentuated in all its symptoms, but not specifically divergent from the common 
run of imperialism that affects modern nations.
M. Millioud finds that there are three several factors that have converged to a 
deplorable outcome in the case of Germany: (a) a military caste and tradition 
making for warlike disturbance and political dominion, among its forces being an 
irresponsible and fantastically ambitious dynasty; (b) a business community 
driven by the pursuit of gain into precociously adventurous enterprises; and (c) 
a patriotically devoted populace. Each of these three factors that have so 
converged to a fatal outcome has in the German case been wrought to an extreme, 
not to say extravagant, pitch. So much is a matter of common notoriety, as 
touches the case of Germany. And it should be plain on slight reflection that, 
except for their unexampled virulence and abandon in the German case, these 
elements of disturbance are common to all modern nations. What M. Millioud's 
review of the case brings under a strong light in all this is the part played by 
the members of the German business community, whose somewhat headlong - and 
largely subsidized - enterprise had brought them to an impasse, where their 
continued solvency was conditioned upon a continued cumulative inflation that 
was already beginning to exceed their powers. Hence the warlike decision of the 
German government appears to be a recourse to desperate remedies for a desperate 
disease.
Economic students will scarcely question the substantial accuracy of M. 
Millioud's observations as they touch the state of German business enterprise in 
the years immediately preceding the war. But anyone who shares the view that the 
German strategists had already delayed their "defensive offense" beyond the moat 
propitious date will not readily come to believe that dynastic ambition could 
have permitted any prolonged respite, even if it should have appeared feasible 
to maneuver the crazy fabric of inflated credit and subsidized enterprise into a 
position of tolerable stability and solvency.
THORSTEIN VEBLEN
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.