The hectic sequence of Germany's constitutional history led that unhappy country, following the final liquidation by Napoleon of the last remnants of medieval constitutionalism, through the confusion of Austro-Prussian rivalry, Empire, democratic Republic, and Fascist dictatorship, to the total vacuum of unconditional surrender in May, 1945. The pretense of a four-power (quadripartite) condominium by means of the Allied Control Council, which at first looked to many responsible people like a feasible stop-gap, has been revealed in this sequence as an empty façade. During the years 1945–49, Germany has been governed by a bewildering maze of conflicting and competing authorities whose legitimacy, beyond the reach of their immediate power, has been in considerable doubt. Authority, power, legitimacy; unless these are effectively combined and balanced, the existence of a true government may well be doubted. Continental Europeans, who prefer to talk about the “state” in discussing problems of government, have therefore been wondering whether the German state has continued to exist—a problem in higher semantics which is briefly discussed below.

The second session of the Eightieth Congress was convened under unusual circumstances: the Republicans controlled the Congress, the Democrats the presidency and administration, and both the President and Congress faced a national election.

In response to this situation, the majority party at times conducted itself in both houses as if a congressional and presidential Republican victory in the approaching election were a certainty; particular members of the Democratic party in each house were frequently outspoken in their opposition to electing President Truman as the next president; both parties performed on occasions as if bidding against each other for votes in the coming election; and a number of representatives and senators were concerned with the outcome at the national conventions. This condition was evidenced when the spokesman of the Senate Democrats, Senator Barkley, on the closing night just prior to the Republican convention had the following to say:

“… I understand hope has been abandoned of getting a housing bill, but I have been told tonight that the Republican moguls in Philadelphia have sent word down here that we are not to adjourn until a housing bill is passed—just anything that has got a house in it.

The progressive movement developed for the campaign of 1924 into La Follette's Progressive party operating as a third party, with many of the progressive Republicans giving it active support and thereby bolting the Republican nominee, President Coolidge; and immediately following the election, won easily by the Republican party, the Republican leaders began to suggest punishing the bolters by treating them, in respect to committee assignments, as members of a third party and no longer as Republicans, and thus depriving them of their seniority on committees, a privilege which had put many of them in good positions. Senator Watson (Indiana), who became chairman of the Republican Committee on Committees in the Senate, indicated that “Senator La Follette and all those who read themselves out of the party” would lose their present committee places in the new (69th) Congress and would be given places according to their new party strength; Senator Moses (New Hampshire), slated for president pro tem. of the Senate, said: “Senator La Follette has gone out of the Republican party and has gone voluntarily. He has headed the national ticket of a new party which he undoubtedly hopes to perpetuate.

Canadian local-government institutions have been influenced by those of both Great Britain and the United States, yet they retain a distinctly Canadian character. Few residents of the United States have been acquainted with Canada's internal governmental problems, because there has been relatively little information available. Canada's top political leaders have been pre-occupied with making Canada a nation, one prepared to take its place in world affairs. But what of the governments within the Dominion? The Rowell-Sirois Commission hearings and its reports in 1939 brought to the attention of many people the problems of dominion-provincial relations. More recently, the Goldenberg report in British Columbia brought attention to certain provincial-local relationships. During the 1930's, many persons in the United States became interested in the Canadian provincial boards of municipal affairs because those boards seemed to offer a means for disciplining improvident municipalities and maintaining good fiscal standards. Viewed in their full perspective, however, these boards and the departments of municipal affairs in Canadian provinces illustrate vital developments in central-local relations. Within the past forty-five years, Canadians have moved rapidly in developing the vast natural resources of the country and in building cities, towns, and villages.

Traditionally, American public interest in national defense has been sporadic, alternating between short periods of intense concern and longer periods of general indifference. Except for World War II, the only sustained military effort since 1789 was provoked by internal strife. American manpower ended the stalemate of World War I, but our participation was neither lengthy nor economically intensive.

We often forget that one of the first purposes motivating the Founding Fathers was to “provide for the common defense.” Six of the eighteen clauses in Section 8 of Article I of the Constitution, defining the legislative authority of the new federal government, deal with military matters. It was no accident that in the early issues of the Federalist John Jay and Alexander Hamilton should have dwelt at length upon the defense requirements of the American states. Properly, Hamilton was concerned also to demonstrate that under the proposed constitution the military would be subject to the civilian authority.

The National Security Council, created by the National Security Act of 1947, is the instrument through which the President obtains the collective advice of the appropriate officials of the executive branch concerning the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security. An outline of the genesis of this new governmental agency will indicate in part its present rôle.

Even before World War II, a few far-sighted men were seeking for a means of correlating our foreign policy with our military and economic capabilities. During the war, as military operations began to have an increasing political and economic effect, the pressure for such a correlation increased. It became apparent that the conduct of the war involved more than a purely military campaign to defeat the enemy's armed forces. Questions arose of war aims, of occupational policies, of relations with governments-in-exile and former enemy states, of the postwar international situation with its implications for our security, and of complicated international machinery.

The purpose of a military organization is to fight and win wars. This dictates its form, creates its methods, explains its nature. A military organization must be flexible in structure, but inflexible in discipline. It commands, and it must be commanded; but it also leads, and must be led. Its orders must be at once peremptory and persuasive, its authority unquestioned but openminded, not rigid.

It creates and uses a science of force and power, a machine of destruction; but it is not itself a machine, or mechanical. It calls upon every resource of the human intellect and heart, and its proper use is more an art than a craft or a science. For it is a synthesis of the ideas and emotions of men, and its greatest strengths and worst flaws are imponderables.

Provision for national security requires planning in many fields—military, technological, political, and economic. Planning in the economic field is of special importance. The sustained striking power of our armed forces would depend to a large extent on our economic preparedness and on the speed and effectiveness with which the economy could be converted to war production.

Economic mobilization involves the marshaling and coördination of the nation's resources as an integral part of a total war effort. It means the conversion of thousands of factories from the production of civilian goods to the production of essential war items. Machine tools and other industrial equipment must be reconditioned and new machinery made and installed for the production of airplanes, ships, tanks, and guns. Facilities for the production of essential war-supporting products and services must be expanded, and the output of non-essential products must be curtailed. Allocations, priorities, rationing, and conservation measures must be imposed to assure the effective utilization of manpower, materials, production facilities, fuels, power, and communication and transportation services. These and other wartime measures must be accomplished with a minimum disruption of the civilian economy, lest they destroy the sources upon which the effectiveness of economic mobilization in a democratic nation depends.

The actual use of polling techniques by the federal government falls far short of what one eminent social scientist, Julian L. Woodward, foresees for the future. He says: “Sooner or later, the government itself will have to go into the polling field and provide both its administrators and its legislators with adequate and sound information on what the public thinks. Eventually this sort of information will become as necessary as census data and will be provided by an agency with a reputation for unbiased research equal to that now enjoyed by the present Census Bureau.”

While the potentialities of public opinion research in the government have only begun to be exploited, administrators and even legislators, who characteristically have been more hostile toward polling, have found methods of testing public opinion answerable to their needs. In accord with their purposes, they have used public opinion surveys to sample a small group of leaders, a large group, or the total population. They have been concerned also with content analysis of the press and of radio programs. The usefulness of attitude surveys was established particularly during the war and has continued since in a somewhat lesser degree.