As a part of its work, the committee on research of the American Political Science Association has undertaken a survey of the relation of politics to kindred types of inquiry, including psychology, anthropology, geography, biology, engineering and others. The purpose of such an inquiry is to explore the relationships that exist with kindred sciences, to facilitate coöperation with our fellow-workers, to improve our methods of investigation, and to promote the progress of political science.

The committee is not responsible for this report, for its form or content, its scope or method, its sins of omission or commission. Probably the general sentiment of the committee toward psychology would be expressed by the phrase, con amore ma non troppo.

It may be worth while at the outset to scrutinize some of the earlier relations of psychology to political science, for the friendship is one of long standing. In the earlier forms of political thinking, there are crude types of psychology that are of great interest and significance in the development of the art of political thinking. These philosophers evidently utilized all of the psychology that was current in the construction of their political systems.

The Supreme Court's decision in the Danbury Hatters' case marked the beginning of a new era in trade-union activity, for laborers well realized that the Sherman act, as interpreted and applied by the court in that case, was a measure with which they would eventually have to reckon. The provision expressly declaring that equity courts may be resorted to in order to restrain violations of the act was an objection in itself, serious enough. But the statute held for laborers a much more vital concern: they also perceived that a strict construction of its provisions might even jeopardize the existence of the trade union itself. Laborers naturally felt very keenly even the suggestion that the Anti-Trust Act might be interpreted in such a manner as to deny to laborers the right to organize, and they undoubtedly believed, and not without a certain justification, that the dissolution of the trade union, as a combination in restraint of trade, would be the probable, if not the necessary, result of the court's decision in the Hatters' case.

“Under the interpretation placed upon the Sherman Anti-Trust law by the courts,” Mr. Gompers averred, “it is within the province and within the power of any administration … to begin proceedings to dissolve any labor organization in the United States.” Labor unions exist only “at the suffrance of the Department of Justice.”

Ten years ago the Moslem world seemed near to political extinction. The only portion of it that could present a reasonable claim to be called independent was Turkey, and Turkish freedom was hampered by debt control, which gave foreigners the command of a large fraction of the Turkish revenues, and by the Capitulations, which allowed foreigners to reside on Turkish territory without obedience to Turkish laws. At the close of the Great War this last remnant of the once vast political Islam seemed about to be destroyed. But in a little more than five years a very different situation has developed among the Moslems, and in many regions they are moving rapidly in the direction of independence and modernization. Not only Turkey, but Persia, Afghanistan, Khiva, Bokhara, Albania, Egypt, and the Hejaz claim to be independent now; while other regions, such as Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Turkestan, and Azerbeijan, not to speak of Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, are in different degrees stirred with the desire to become free. In fact, every portion of the Moslem world, defining it to mean those lands in which persons professing the Mohammedan faith are in the majority, aspires to full statehood. India does not fall within this definition, having only about 20 per cent of Moslems; but the Moslems of India along with the rest are agitated by the demand for the complete independence of that great country.

The principal ideas that have been working in the Moslem world are self-determination, constitutionalism, the separation of church and state, the desire to obtain the benefits of modern scientific advances, and unwillingness to remain indefinitely among those regarded as backward peoples. All of these ideas have had their origin or their recent development in western civilization. They have all been greatly promoted by the example and in many cases by the actual promises of Western nations engaged in the recent war.