The enunciation of what has since been dubbed the Point Four Program sprang from a variety of motives. There was in the aim a very generous portion of sheer American idealism and a desire to help the less fortunate; there was a note of response to a challenge posed for people who believed deeply in what Weber called ascetic mastery over the things of this world; and there was an attempt at a hard-headed realistic program that would “win friends and influence the peoples” of the world in favor of the West in general, but most especially in favor of the United States, in the struggle with the Communists of the USSR for safety and a world of peace. The history of this period and the corollary assessments of good and bad intentions will not be written for some time; for the present, we are concerned with one of the fragment arguments about how these “worthy goals” should be obtained. The goals themselves have found wide agreement in the most divergent camps. No one has effectively challenged the desirability of peace and cooperation among nations, of increased standards of living throughout the world, of improved health conditions, better education, and the like.

“The best thing about diplomatic life,” Joseph C. Grew once confided to his diary, “… is that one never knows when some event or development of prime importance is going to occur. We pursue the even tenor of our ways for weeks and months and then, often suddenly and unexpectedly, we find ourselves in the midst of a maelstrom of hectic activity, working day and night, rushing telegrams, drafting press communiqués and speeches, dashing from place to place, doing useful work.” Turbulent Era, the account of the forty years he spent as a career diplomat in the American Foreign Service, is convincing evidence that Joseph Grew was present on an extraordinary number of occasions when something of importance broke and that, above all, he was always doing useful work for the country he served so faithfully and so well.

“Realism” and “idealism” are both terms which have been used in differing, sometimes opposite, senses in the history of philosophy. They must therefore be employed with great caution. Dr. John H. Herz, in his recent study of the application of these terms to politics, seeks to define the sense in which he uses them. He writes in his preface that the book was in the main finished when the last war was ended and that little which had happened since required modification of his conclusions. To the reviewer it seems that further thought on the concepts employed in a perspective more removed from the disturbing influences of the war period would have been desirable.

It is traditional, and frequently beneficial, to express dissatisfaction with the process of foreign policy-making in the United States. If political scientists have attracted a disproportionate share of attention for their indulgence in this national pastime, it may well be due to their command of word and pen rather than to the uniqueness of their concern with the subject. Nearly everyone who thinks about the problem has had a liberal amount of unkind words to distribute among different actors and institutions engaged in policy formulation.

Seven years have passed since the UN Charter was signed in San Francisco in the month of June 1945. In that short time, events have disproved some of the most important assumptions about the postwar world on which the 1945 decisions were based.

Efforts have been made, notably in the improvisations of the Korea police action, in the creation of the Interim Committee, and in the Uniting for Peace Resolution, to adapt the structure conceived at San Francisco so that it would more closely meet the needs of the world as it emerged from the crucible of World War II.

These two books provide an opportunity to compare the approach of the economist and of other social scientists to the problem of economic development, although neither volume can be taken as a fair measure of the contributions the various disciplines can make to understanding the growth process in particular societies.

The United Nations Report, which is the work of a group of economists appointed by the Secretary General of the organization, aims at policy more than analysis. It is also quite general in character, and a discussion that embraces the tremendous diversity of so-called underdeveloped countries must perforce maintain a distressing level of abstraction. Despite this structure, the Report remains eminently readable.

We live in a world that cannot possibly satisfy our highest expectations. For these expectations must envision a universal society in which man would be forever secure from the exercise of arbitrary power; a truly reasonable world governed by harmonious action and not by conflicting interests; particularly, a world in which life would not seek to dominate life and the threat of violence would disappear. Machiavelli once described this world of the imagination as one where statecraft could be based solely upon considerations of “charity, integrity, and humanity, all uprightness, and all piety.” In point of fact, however, it would be a world in which statecraft would be altogether unnecessary. But not only is statecraft necessary; there are limitations imposed upon the possibilities of political action and these limitations must have an important, even a decisive, bearing upon the various strategies open to the political actor.