Students of international relations are concerned with the description, prediction, and control of the external behavior of states, particularly of their more violent types of behavior such as intervention, hostilities, and war. It is clear that mere description of a diplomatic or military event has little meaning by itself and that such an event can neither be predicted nor controlled unless account is taken of the circumstances which preceded it within each of the states involved. Among the internal circumstances which have been studied are the correspondence of statesmen, the declarations of legislatures, executives, foreign offices, and political parties, the prescriptions of constitutional law and procedure, the traditional policies manifested by the history of the state, and the understandings of treaty and international law accepted by the community of nations at the time and presumably by the states involved.

One of the best known members of the bench in the United States raised the query whether constitutional law was not becoming so textual and so formal in its applications that it was losing touch with the realities of life. For the operations of government to be “cabined and confined” under ordinary circumstances raises difficulties not readily surmounted; but in times of unusual stress, either constitutional limitations unduly restrict urgent and necessary action or they must be ignored to permit emergency measures. A resumé of the decisions of state and federal courts affecting state constitutions for the year 1932–33 indicates the tendency both toward undue formality in interpretation and toward the warping of the constitutional mold to sanction ways and means of dealing with extraordinary conditions. Law, like life, is a matter of growth, and, as Lord Bryce long since observed, under written constitutions ways of growth must be found either within or without the provisions of fundamental laws.

The “new deal” has received resounding praise from the public press. Newspaper editors, however, have not always hailed the spokesman of it so heartily. Indeed, one is tempted to suggest that the present acclaim arises in some part from the fact that prompt and decisive action came as a distinct and dramatic surprise to those who had expected little. However that may be, the following survey of opinions of newspaper editors made during last fall's presidential campaign presents an interesting contrast with current editorial expression.

The purposes of organized society in New York City, as in every metropolitan community, are made manifest through groups. By no means exclusively political, these purposes are social, cultural, and economic; they are expressed as objectives of individuals identified with each other by having common national and racial origins, common religion or residence or partisan affiliation. The articulation of these purposes is accomplished through group representatives who, in one way or another, acquire power over their fellows. Relationships between individuals composing these groups are of two kinds: vertical and horizontal. In each vertical group, there is a hierarchy of power, with the few at the top of the pyramid exercising authority over those below—authority that is never unlimited, but always dependent on the observance of established modes of behavior and the recognition of sudden shifts of opinion. The horizontal relationships between the officials on comparable levels of the various vertical groups are normally cooperative in character; but in certain cases they are combative. The theory of the party system requires, for example, the leaders of the parties to contend with each other for the support of the marginal voters. All of the individuals composing these groups are humanly frail and uncertain in their loyalties. Consequently, the equilibrium of forces just described is often disturbed by revolt within the vertical associations and by the constant re-formation of alliances among the horizontal groups.

“They asked me my party; I told them Republican. That's Sam Lit's party, ain't it?” The speaker was a small, dark-visaged young man. He had addressed his question to Mr. Lit's partner on the ward committee in the first ward. It was the night of registration day, and the young Italian had just registered. Not only were the genius of the Republican party, its traditional issues, and the great leaders from Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt to Herbert Hoover obliterated, or non-existent, to him, but the important local issues of the impending (1931) mayoralty and councilmanic campaigns as well. The one thing in the party process that mattered was the personality of Sam Lit, the ward committeeman. This potential voter is one of the thousands in America's third city that illustrate the general statement: “We cannot be much interested in, or moved by, the things we do not see. Of public affairs, each of us sees very little, and therefore they remain dull and unappetizing until somebody with the makings of an artist has translated them into a moving picture. …Being flesh and blood, we will not feed on words and names and grey theory.”

Due to the necessities of post-war reconstruction, and owing also in no small part to the deflation of public confidence in the, private-initiative-in-industry presumption, it seems clear that greater nationalization and municipalization will occur in those countries where such a development is not already well-advanced. Where, as a result of revolution and dictatorship, extensive economic services are already publicly owned and operated, the problems of public administration have become enormous and disconcerting. Satisfactory bureaucracies are not built in a decade.