THE author is minister of the Wesley Methodist Church in Minneapolis. A widely circulated questionnaire, which has just been tabulated, discloses the fact that of some 25,000 American clergy only five per-cent are content with the capitalistic system. Mr. Mecklenburg belongs to the other ninety-five per-cent. He went to Russia willing to learn. Whether he was let see what he might have liked to see we do not know. He seems to think that he moved about freely; and now, certainly, he speaks out his mind.

He callenges the platitude that Russian is at present a communism. As he sees it in operation he finds it a form of state socialism. He quotes Russian leaders to this effect and cites their professed hope that at some time in the middle distance--a hundred years hence perhaps--communism may become an achieved fact. Doctrinaire socialism of the Marxian type he did not find in operation. Indeed, with democracy, he thinks it dead the world over. The one live political dogma is Fascism.

Dr. Mecklenburg deflates a good many of the supposed horrors and terrors of Russian life. Under Stalin religious persecution has cased. Free love is ancient history and divorce is becoming increasingly difficult:--at present the figures are not appreciably in advance of those in America. He notes the inefficiency of the Russian industrial plants--only two out of three automobiles will run out of the shop under their own power. But he thinks this inefficiency no worse than the unemployment of millions of men in the rest of the world.

He had as travelling companions an English communist and an American capitalist. The former was more and more disgusted with Russia because it turned out not to be bona fide communism; the later was more an more interested in Russia, a Russia which could build the Dneiper Dam. The author is always of two minds. He is sceptical as to the effects of propaganda throttling school books, cinemas, and the press. Children learn English to the tune, "Little American boy is hungry. . American boy wishes he could come to Russia, where he can got enough to cat." He doubts whether under such a system there can be great music, drama, fiction, and poetry.

On the other hand he found there a state getting on with the business of teaching its children something concrete. While not subscribing to all that is taught, he approves of the courage and determinatio, to impart some definite theory of life;--a mode of education religiously, and at times ethically, denied the public school system in this country.

Two cliches amused him: "cleansing" and "liquidating". The central committees are periodically "cleansed" of inactive members. If you don't make converts, out you go. The word "liquidate" he heard fifty times a day. All the stubborn problems of life and the world--bad roads, antiquated farming, stealing--were in process of being "liquidated." Mr. Mecklenburg approved of this category.

Not the least interesting part of this book is a preliminary twenty pages in which the Secretary-Treasurer of the Organized Unemployed, Inc., of Minneapolis--an outgrowth of Dr. Mecklenburg's work at Wesley Church-tells us how the author has grappled with the depression. 400,000 meals served, 400,000 leaves of bread baked and sold for 2 1-2 cents scrip, 10,000 pairs of shoes repaired, 8,000 cords of wood sawed, etc. . . . Mr. Mecklenburg feels that the answer of American religion to Russia must be as concrete as the challenge. To his credit be it said that his faith, apparently, is not without works.