Books: For the Peacemakers

THE GOOD SOCIETY—Walter Lippmann, with a new introduction by the author to the 1943 edition—Little, Brown ($2).

Walter Lippmann wrote The Good Society in 1937. He realized then that a second World War was inevitable. His book was an attempt to state the principles that might guide Americans after that war. It is the domestic counterpart of Lippmann’s U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic. The Good Society was stamped with the feeling that national planning of economics and the emergence of total war are linked and inseparable phenomena. Planning needs the integrating stimulus of an outside enemy and, conversely, the presence of the outside enemy demands planning of production for war purposes. To have peace, the nations must forgo the urge to canalize to fixed ends the productive energies of private citizens. That is the essence of the “good society.”

There are no changes in the new edition.

Mr. Lippmann’s defense of individualism under law is offered as a guide for the peacemakers.