Strongyloidiasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by the roundworm Strongyloides stercoralis affecting 30–100 million people worldwide. Many Southeast-Asian countries report a high prevalence of S. stercoralis infection, but there are little data from Vietnam. Here, we evaluated the seroprevalence of S. stercoralis related to geography, sex and age in Vietnam through serological testing of anonymized sera. Sera (n = 1710, 1340 adults and 270 children) from an anonymized age-stratified serum bank from four regions in Vietnam between 2012 and 2013 were tested using a commercial Strongyloides ratti immunoglobulin G ELISA. Seroreactivity was found in 29·1% (390/1340) of adults and 5·5% (15/270) of children. Male adults were more frequently seroreactive than females (33·3% vs. 24·9%, P = 0·001). The rural central highlands had the highest seroprevalence (42·4% of adults). Seroreactivity in the other regions was 29·9% (Hue) and 26·0% and 18·2% in the large urban centres of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, respectively. We conclude that seroprevalence of S. stercoralis was high in the Vietnamese adult population, especially in rural areas.

Without a counterpart for any other country there is in the United States government a deputy assistant secretary of state for Canadian affairs, a post created in December 1972. This, like the lower-level Office of Canadian Affairs established in 1965, was an institutional recognition of the increasing importance of Canadian-American relations. Were these offices also harbingers of increased state-centric attention to relations between the two countries, which until then had been subject primarily to transnational and transgovernmental management of affairs? Or were they rather recognition that in addition to the uniquely complex web of transborder relationships outside of or at levels below those dealt with by high political authorities, state-centric relations were increasing because of the importance of and increase in unofficial and bureaucratic transactions?

Only six of the small states of Western or Western oriented Europe participated in the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco. They were Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Norway, Luxembourg, and, after a struggle between the Soviet Union and its wartime allies, Denmark. Their participation followed, for the most part, the model of the “honorable, independent, disinterested small state”: sober, responsible, speaking mainly when spoken to, but assiduously seeking out ways to make their voices heard in the alleviation of international conflict. True, they were there as part of the winning coalition in World War II and shared the hopes and expectations of the larger Western powers concerning the role of the United Nations. But they joined similar countries outside Europe, particularly Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, in helping to shape a UN Charter which in certain ways differed from the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals. The role of the General Assembly was, for example, enlarged, thus modifying the special position of the Great Powers, and the scope of the United Nations in economic and social fields was expanded. The influence of the small states in Europe stemmed from the desire of the major Western allies, particularly the United States, to ensure the success of the enterprise by concessions to those whose participation would be necessary to make it a worthwhile undertaking.

INTERNATIONAL relations, as a subject of instruction, has flourished more in the United States than elsewhere and more in recent years than ever before. What forces explain its growth and its present shape? How have methods of teaching it been affected by the goals of the teacher, by his relation to research, and by the formal organization of international studies in American colleges and universities? To what extent is the American experience so rooted in uniquely American conditions that it is unlikely to be repeated elsewhere? These questions will be considered in turn.

The contrast between brave American words in support of colonial aspirations and United States military aid in support of colonial powers putting down native insurrection is painfully sharp. Checking the spread of Soviet imperialism and liquidating the remnants of old-style European imperialism are objectives which seem to stand in the way of each other. Military security can apparently be purchased only at the price of popular hostility in the colonial world. And friendship may prove unpurchasable at any price.

Foreign policy making always involves a reconciliation of not wholly compatible goals, but the dilemma which United States colonial policy poses in Asia is peculiarly distasteful. What we face there today we might tomorrow face in Africa or the Pacific islands. Some action has to be improvised in the Far East at once. But this crisis also requires the United States to remove the conditions which will present similar predicaments elsewhere in the future.

Organized international intervention in colonial affairs has never found favor in the eyes of the European colonial powers. It did not at San Francisco when they sought to restrict the United Nations role in non-self-governing territories. It was not well received when the Security Council dealt with Indonesia nor were its results favored when the General Assembly disposed of the Italian empire. It does not please them, now, when the focus of public attention is on the political, economic, and social development of the colonies.

If a defeated Japan is to be “ pared back to her volcanic core,” China will be a prime beneficiary. The Cairo Declaration promised to return to her Formosa, the Pescadores, and Manchuria. But what of those parts of the Japanese colonial empire which were not Chinese? Some other arrangements must be made for Korea and the Japanese mandated islands. Liquidation of Italy's African empire raises similar questions.