A Job Analysis of Political Science

Extract

Sentiment alone does not send my thoughts back to the first meeting of the Association which I attended—that held in Washington in December, 1920, a quarter of a century ago. You will have no time for that, although, perhaps, entry into a guild and fellowship has its appropriate niche for each of us, and so in some measure plays a collective rôle. The times and circumstances then and now, however, have useful common elements; both meetings followed and follow a world war; both reflect an atmosphere of exhaustion and of worry, of unsettlement, and also of new challenges to effort in the reshaping of things.

But lately I have been recalling particularly words spoken at that earlier meeting by the then Secretary of War, Newton Baker, when he addressed the assembled Associations. Some of you will remember how vividly he described an episode in an American offensive in France, when he stood beside the commanding officer in a small hut, the maps and charts before them, and messages poured in as the hour of assault arrived and the troops moved forward. After a time came an appeal from an advanced unit requesting the barrage to be lifted, as their objective was won. The commander studied the maps and charts. “Continue the barrage,” he ordered; “we cannot yet have reached that point.” Later, after the battle was over and prisoners were being questioned, the message was traced to an enemy officer who had thus tried to trick the Americans and had faked the appeal. Secretary Baker drove home his point.