These two books are the only products so far of a policy which has given certain scholars untrammeled access to the files and personnel of the Department of State, and other branches of the government. The policy is highly individual, selective and personal. Its object is not to produce “official” histories, but to bring out reasonably adult studies of our wartime diplomatic program many years before the routine publication and long-term historical analysis of official documents can be accomplished. One great advantage of such studies is that they permit an evaluation of oral in the light of documentary evidence, and a reading of documents in the light of conversation, during the lifetime of those who witnessed and shared in the process of decision. The purpose of the program is to inform, and perhaps to form opinion. As Professor Langer makes clear in his introduction, his book had its origin in Secretary Hull's desire to meet the violent public criticism of his Vichy policy, criticism which he felt was based on inadequate information, and hence mistaken judgments.

IT is not the least of the sins of the current East-West conflict that its hypnotic influence has seduced our attention away from a number of other problems some of which are at least as likely to determine the future of mankind as that conflict itself. Among these problems one which stands out as of indisputably central importance is the future development of the many millions of peoples who remain in a colonial status or have recently emerged from it into a precarious independence. To these peoples there must be assimilated others—notably the Chinese—who, although they have never come under explicit colonial rule, are in the same general position of emerging suddenly from an ancient world into the complex modernities which are essentially the creation of Western Europe and its descendants overseas. From another aspect these are all peoples who in modern times have been the object of the policies and activities of more dynamic states and peoples and who are now vigorously asserting the right to become masters of their own destiny. At the least they demand the right to be let alone to shape their own societies according to their own conceptions of the good life, with such non-imperialistic aid as they may be able to secure; and, beyond this, they seek to play an active role in the shaping of the world at large on equal terms with the peoples to whom they have been subject and inferior. The internal cohesion, structure, and advancement of these peoples, the attitudes which they come to develop, the power which they may achieve, and the goals toward which they direct this power, are matters which may well prove to be the most crucial issues of future decades and even centuries.

The extraordinarily difficult, almost exasperating character of the German Question is created by its many various aspects. There is the economic one: what are the relations between German and European, as well as world economies? Would not an economically strong Germany upset foreign markets and make other countries dependent upon her? There is the political issue: what ought to be the position of Germany in Europe? Is Germany able and willing to participate in a balance of power system, or would she invariably try to use her power exclusively for her own advantage? What role will Germany play in the conflict between East and West? There are problems of German internal organizations and frontiers: is a unified Germany not a constant threat to world peace? But does not a dismemberment of Germany create an eternal irredenta? There are moral and intellectual issues: what role has National Socialism played in German history? Will it not come back again, perhaps under another name, as soon as some external restraints are removed? Or is National Socialism, with its aggression and terror, only an accident for which non-Germans are at least as responsible as the Germans themselves? Have we the right to make Germans particularly accountable for a general development which only manifested itself first in Germany, and victimized the German people itself?

If peace and security are the earmarks of a successful foreign policy, the foreign policies pursued since the end of the first World War by the great Western powers were certainly less successful than any pursued by these powers since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. To say this, of course, is only to state the obvious. That the succession of failures is rooted in a marked decline in the political intelligence of the Western world is less obvious. Yet the recognition of that relationship is decisive for the understanding of the disease which holds the modern state system in its grip.

Strategic Intelligence can be read variously as: 1) a general introduction to intelligence work which, say, the director of almost any section of Central Intelligence might give a new recruit to read on his first day at the office; 2) a memorandum from an Old Hand at intelligence work who has thought it all over—like the bird in Peter and the Wolf, from a safe distance—and has a thing or two to tell those of his colleagues who have stayed on in Washington; and 3) an attempt by that same Old Hand to make sense—inter alia for himself—out of a greatly expanded United States government activity in which, as all who know it can testify, sense does not leap to the eye. Because the book is in part each of these three things, it is not perfectly satisfactory as any one of them. But it is evidently not offered as a learned treatise on any or all of them: indeed, the gap in the existing literature in the field is so great that one can hardly be surprised at Mr. Kent's failure to define his task with precision. The great merit of his book is that it provides a body of descriptive material which will enable serious public discussion to begin on the relation of intelligence to policy in a democratic system. Since it is American policy on which the future of the free world seems to depend, it is high time for the public debate to commence.

P. M. S. Blackett, Nobel Laureate in Physics for 1948, is a scientist of distinction and outstanding ability. He is therefore capable, as all good scientists should be, of careful and objective reasoning concerning matters that do not impinge too closely upon his faiths and implicit beliefs. Unfortunately, the subject matter of his book, Fear, War, and the Bomb, suggests that Blackett has allowed his pronounced political sympathies to warp his observations and his reasoning. They have apparently led him to suppress large numbers of pertinent facts, to ignore many crucial technical and political possibilities, and to depreciate the honesty and good faith of his government and of ours to an absurd degree.

Publication of Politics Among Nations is another important milestone in the development of systematic studies of international political phenomena into an established and recognized branch of higher learning.

Comparison of this impressive treatise with any work published before 1914 reveals in dramatic fashion how much ground has already been covered. Before World War I, as Grayson Kirk has described, the study of international relations was largely carried on in the sterile atmosphere of international law and conventionalized diplomatic history. The crusade for the League of Nations opened up a new field and gave great impetus to the study of world organization. This newcomer practically stole the show during the 1920's. But the course of world events did not fulfill the bright hopes fostered by schemes for disarmament, outlawry of war, collective security, judicial settlement of disputes, and codification of international law. Teachers and writers, however, continued to play the same old records, which sounded more and more unconvincing as the dictators prepared the stage for another world war.

If the passing of the European age is not to mean the passing of the democratic way of life, democrats must be better equipped than they now are to carry on the struggle for the minds and hearts of men who dwell beyond the confines of the Western, democratic world. Indeed, if democracy is to maintain itself against the forces which threaten it from within, democrats must reexamine the bases of their belief. The struggles to make the world safe for democracy and to make democracy safe in its traditional Western homelands are indeed so intertwined that the task is as urgent on the one front as it is on the other.

These four publications appeared in the latter half of 1947 but all of them were written near the middle of the year. Three of them deal directly with the policy which the United States should adopt toward the Soviet Union. The concern of Mr. Armstrong at first seems to be limited to “the two main objectives of American foreign policy”: “to help Europe live and to strengthen the United Nations.” Subsequently, however, although Mr. Armstrong is nowhere explicit on this point, it appears that these are techniques, rather than objectives, for the first would avert the “planned social and economic disintegration” furthered by the Soviet Union, while the second would diminish the effectiveness of Moscow's policy of “indirect aggression.” It is, therefore, not unreasonable to include Mr. Armstrong among those offering answers to the question: Where do we go from here in seeking equilibrium and even an accord with the Kremlin?

The Russian Research Center was established February 1, 1948. It is supported by the Carnegie Corporation on a grant covering the period until July 1, 1953. The Research Center is an integral part of Harvard University and the senior members of its staff are all members of the Harvard faculty. Although the Center is not directly concerned with instruction, there is close cooperation with the Soviet Program of the Committee on International and Regional Studies, and a number of members of the Center staff teach in this program.

The Royal Institute of International Affairs has made available almost all of that correspondence between the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the U. S. S. R. which culminated in the open break between Tito and Moscow and between the Yugoslav Communist Party and the sister parties associated in the Communist Information Bureau.

The letters are most revealing. Not only do they give us a picture of the dispute, much clearer than we could glean from previous accusations and counter-accusations; their tone and material also provide a valuable insight into the workings of international communism. Here we have an instance of a “live” dispute within the highest circles of international communism rather than a case of resurrected quarrels from the past. There is no doubt as to the authenticity of the documents concerned. For once we have in our grasp material of first class importance and relevance.

Four able and penetrating writers have recently given us their considered views on the nature and scope of international relations as a branch of higher learning.* While each of them starts from a somewhat different intellectual viewpoint, they display a striking similarity of conception of the general place of international relations (hereafter referred to as IR) in the spectrum of human knowledge. I propose here, not to subject these writings to critical scrutiny, but to use them as a starting point for a brief inspection of the scope of international relations as it now seems to be taking form in the work of the leading scholars in the field.

It is necessary to note in the beginning that “scope” is a dangerously ambiguous word. It suggests that the subject matter under inquiry has clearly discernible limits, and that all one has to do in defining its scope is to trace out these boundaries in much the manner of a surveyor marking out the bounds of a piece of real property. Actually, it is nothing of the sort. A field of knowledge does not possess a fixed extension in space but is a constantly changing focus of data and methods that happen at the moment to be useful in answering an identifiable set of questions. It presents at any given time different aspects to different observers, depending on their point of view and purpose. The boundaries that supposedly divide one field of knowledge from another are not fixed walls between separate cells of truth but are convenient devices for arranging known facts and methods in manageable segments for instruction and practice. But the foci of interest are constantly shifting and these divisions tend to change with them, although more slowly because mental habits alter slowly and the vested interests of the intellectual world are as resistant to change as those of the social world.

THE student of international relations knows from sad experience what it means to starve in the midst of plenty. His vast sprawling field is the subject of almost endless writing and comment. Memoirs, documents, autobiographies, newspapers, government hand-outs, propaganda publications, and the like pour over his desk in a dismaying stream which grows greater year by year, defying him to master it. If he seeks to preserve his sanity by arbitrarily limiting his interests and investigations to certain geographic areas, he is acutely conscious of the inter-relationship between what happens in his chosen field and developments outside in the terra incognita. If he selects certain topical aspects of his field, such as the study of population, or raw materials, or commercial policy for emphasis, he is quickly enmeshed in the same web of frustrations. He cannot master the entire field and he cannot safely limit himself to a narrow specialization.

A PROJECT of collaborative research concerning major world trends affecting international relations has been launched this year at the Hoover Institute and Library. This project has been made possible by a three-year grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.1

Beneath the original planning for the project lay the conviction born of wartime experience, that a deeper understanding of the dynamics of international relations could be obtained by pooling the contributions of the social sciences and related disciplines and by taking account of practical experience in the international field. The need for new and more penetrating approaches to international relations had been put by Arnold Toynbee in a few challenging words: “There is nothing to prevent our Western Civilization from following historical precedent, if it chooses, by committing social suicide. But we are not doomed to make history repeat itself; it is open to us through our own efforts, to give history, in our case, some new unprecedented turn.” Natural scientists, as well as social scientists are agreed that any “new unprecedented turn” must be sought in deeper understanding of relations among people and among nations.