Books

TODAY, when the whole world is in mortal fear of another war that may shake the very foundations of our culture, “Orient and Occident,” by Hans Kohn (The John Day Company) is a very timely book. Dr. Kohn, who is the author of a number of other works, such as “A History of Nationalism in the East,” “Nationalism in the Soviet Union,” “Nationalism and Imperialism,” knows his Orient not from hearsay or reading alone. He has visited China and Japan, and has traveled extensively throughout the Near East and Russia. His point of view is rather novel in that he sees East and West coming closer and closer together, instead of treading divergent paths, because “the organization of mankind in vertical sections of rigidly secluded peoples and cultures gradually loses significance in the presence of the horizontal organization in ranks, classes and mental attitudes, which is found in all peoples.”

This concise but exhaustive and brilliantly written treatise takes up, one by one, the reasons for the conflict between the Occident and the Orient, the political, cultural and social problems, the role of Bolshevism, the economic problem and the new prospects in world politics. “There is gradually arising,” the author concludes, “an encompassing spiritual and social unity, the unity of mankind, whose organization on new bases is the problem of the modern historical epoch–a problem for the solution of which the harnessing of all the forces of the Orient and the Occident will be necessary.”