THE sins of the fathers are indeed being visited upon the children to the third, fourth and later generations in the southern States of the United States of America. Pressed by an uneasy conscience, the white South has tried here and there to reduce violence, to give somewhat better opportunities of education to the 'Negro', as he is called even if he often obviously has a good deal of white ancestry mixed in. But even those who want to treat the Negroes as brothers do not want them as brothers-in-law, and that is the root of the insoluble conflict. It is evident that recruitment and labour opportunities of the war-economy have given coloured folk a chance to escape from the old-time repression, and that it is becoming more and more difficult, in Africa as well as in the United States, to maintain a society in two layers without letting the lower one up anywhere. Both British and Americans are deeply concerned with the problems involved, and this book pictures for us what happens when the two layers talk about one another. The author gives a collection of fantastic rumours, many of which he helps us to see are quite baseless. But the rumour habit makes even the former limited inter-racial courtesies difficult to maintain; they are made to look like 'treason against your side', and this is inevitably the case, especially among the coloured folk. Race and Rumors of Race Challenge to American Crisis. By Howard W. Odum. Pp. x + 245. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1943.) 12s. net.