The genealogy of the rural electrification idea and the story of its gradual development through the years 1914–36 may have important implications in the study of governmental and social institutions. Up to a comparatively recent date, there have been no generally recognized laws influencing progress, whether as to science, government, or society. Progress has been recognized in the main as a matter of chance, or perhaps as something like a 100-to-1 shot in poker or horse-racing. With science, however, there is noticeable the small beginnings of a workable technique for making progress along predetermined lines. This might have been expected, since in science the items under study are relatively stable as compared with actions in government and society, and are more likely to be uniform when encountered.

In recent years, many scientific inquiries have been quite adequately financed, and coöperation on a national and international basis between thousands of researchers operating in the same or related fields, with full and free publication, has become a rule of the game. Note the strategy developed for the attack first on tuberculosis, and now in formation on the much more complex cancer problem. Yet these campaigns must be considered child's play compared with what is happening in the field of atomic fission. While it is true that in science team-play has become more and more the practice, notably in the medical field, the lone worker still persists in the academic world, where it is held that organization, especially in times of peace, means regimentation.

When the European Advisory Commission in London debated the zonal division of Germany, the original understanding was that the allied zones of occupation should not disturb existing administrative regions more than was absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, a considerable redrawing of provincial and Laender borders took place, partly in order to prevent a Land from administering territory in more than one zone of occupation, partly in the interest of administrative simplification. The present division of Germany into “independent” Laender and autonomous provinces is, therefore, not a repetition of the pre-1871 set-up, but a new and often simpler form of organization.

Under the Weimar Republic, these states had their own constitutions. However, the powers of the Reich government were so overwhelming and the scope of their “enumerated” functions so all-embracing, that relatively small scope was left to the Laender governments. The present situation is radically different.

Fred M. Vinson took his seat as Chief Justice of the United States at the beginning of the 1946 term; there were no other changes in the personnel of the Court. Mr. Justice Jackson returned to the bench after his year's absence in Nuremberg. Continuing disagreement among the justices was shown by the fact that in twenty-three cases four justices dissented, and in twenty-four cases three dissented. The number of concurring opinions filed remained high.

Since the promulgation on March 21, 1947, of Executive Order 9835 “prescribing procedures for the administration of an ‘employees’ loyalty program in the executive branch of the government,” there has been widespread discussion concerning the nature of disloyalty, its probable extent in the federal service, and the desirability of the loyalty program.

One point of view, among some members of Congress and elsewhere, is that this loyalty program does not go far enough to meet what is regarded as the serious menace of foreign (that is, Russian) directed or inspired subversives in the government. A sharply contrasting attitude, also voiced by a few Congressmen and by others, is that the menace is exaggerated for various reasons and that the program constitutes a “witch hunt” aimed at liberals generally and a dangerous attack upon civil liberties. Between these two extremes are gradations of opinion accepting the principle of the program but with reservations of varying intensity as to some of its standards and procedures, and with a watchful eye on its operation and on its effect within the federal service and outside.

The closing chapter in the history of the white primary in the South has seemed since 1944 to be in process of being written. In that year, the United States Supreme Court, by invalidating in Smith v. Allwright the white primary rule of the Texas state Democratic convention, dealt a stunning, if not immediately mortal, blow to this most significant political custom or practice of the Southern states. The refusal of this court on April 19, 1948, to review a federal circuit court decision invalidating the white primary arrangements of South Carolina, created in 1944 to circumvent the effect of the Allwright decision, seems to have administered the judicial coup de grâce. It would, however, be unsafe to predict when “finis” may be set down for all states, political areas, counties, and voting precincts where by one means or another the Negro has long been barred from participation in the all-important primaries of the Democratic party. The remaining suffrage requirements, registration restrictions, and election provisions, and the political and administrative methods of applying them which still are employed in some Southern states and in parts of others in order to render it difficult for Negroes to vote will not be immediately eliminated. Moreover, the effects of political action have not been fully tested by the Democratic leaders of the South. At the present moment, plans for united efforts on their part are under consideration; and these could have far-reaching results before the end of the current presidential election year. Whatever the abstract justice of the situation, traditional attitudes and customs cannot be uprooted easily and have a way of resisting judicial or legislative fiat, particularly when it is honestly felt by many that such fiat has been imposed from the outside and by people unaware of the difficulties and adjustments involved.

Since Negro voting, or the fear of it, is the central issue around which so many other aspects of Southern politics are oriented, it is highly relevant to examine the emergence of Negro voting wherever it occurs in a Southern state. In Texas, the federal Supreme Court's “white primary” decision of April, 1944 (Smith v. Allwright), removed the most formidable barrier to Negro participation in politics and resulted in the entry of a significant number of Negroes into the electorate in 1946. Although Texas, with its relatively small Negro population (14 per cent) may not be an exact barometer to guide us in foreseeing the emergence of Negro voting elsewhere in the South, no one interested in predicting the future of this ticklish question can afford to ignore the Texas experience.

The exclusion of the Negro from Texas political life has never been complete. Texas has made use of neither the literacy or “understanding” test nor the involved registration procedures so effectively employed to limit Negro participation elsewhere in the South. In Texas, the white primary, the poll tax, and such extra-legal factors as an environment hostile to Negro assertiveness have been the only means used. The Negro has been categorically excluded only from the Democratic primary, the election that really counts. Thus, poll-tax paying Negroes have been legally eligible to vote in general elections, municipal elections, school board elections, special elections, and proposition elections concerning some special issue such as local option on liquor. Even the state-wide white primary is of fairly recent origin; it was only in 1923 that the Texas legislature passed a law barring Negroes from the Democratic primary, thus inaugurating the legal battle that produced the four Supreme Court cases on this issue.

The Constitution of the United States provides that each state shall appoint, in such manner as its legislature may direct, a number of presidential electors equal to the number of Senators and Representatives to which the state is entitled in the Congress. The Supreme Court has ruled that this clause gives the state legislature exclusive power to decide the manner of choosing electors. Before 1832, several legislatures themselves selected the members of the state's electoral college, a practice followed by South Carolina until the Civil War. As every student of American government knows, in the period from 1788 to 1832, the popular selection of electors was established and real discretion on the part of electors in choosing a President and Vice President became a legal fiction. For a century, the practice has been for the electorate to choose a set of electors, who, it is understood, will legally confirm the decision already made at the polls.

The automatic operation of the electoral college as a device for translating popular votes into electoral votes is now challenged, however, with the projection of the possibility of eighty “unpledged electors.” The governors of seven Southern states recently agreed that if the Democratic national convention nominates a presidential candidate advocating anti-segregation, anti-lynching, anti-poll tax, and fair employment practices legislation, they will attempt to keep the Democratic electoral votes of their states from being cast for such nominee. This possibility makes state laws regulating the nomination, election, and instruction of presidential electors of utmost interest and importance.

Section 202(a) of Public Law 253 of the 80th Congress, 1st Session, approved July 26, 1947, provides that “there shall be a Secretary of Defense, who shall be appointed from civilian life by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” Section 311 of the same act amends the Presidential Succession Act, approved July 18, by striking out “Secretary of War” and inserting in lieu thereof “Secretary of Defense,” and striking out “Secretary of the Navy.”

The effect of these changes is to elevate the Secretary of Defense to a position in the President's cabinet and to provide for his possible succession to the presidency. The law gives authority for his appointment, but says nothing about his term of office. This raises a question concerning which there is considerable confusion and lack of information. Specifically, what is the term of office of heads of the executive departments, i.e., those who compose the President's cabinet?

If one turns to the more recently established executive departments—those of Commerce and Labor—he reads that in each case the Secretary's “term and tenure of office shall be like that of the heads of the other executive departments.” Further research discloses the interesting fact that only one of the other executive heads has a legal term. This is the Postmaster General. In his case, the law provides that “the term of the Postmaster General shall be for and during the term of the President by whom he is appointed, and for one month thereafter, unless sooner removed.”

A comparison of the postwar worlds of 1919 and 1948 indicates that the process of nation-building has moved from Europe to Asia. In the peace settlement after the First World War, the new states of the world appeared for the most part in Europe, but in the aftermath of the Second World War the new members of the family of nations come almost entirely from Asia.

In Europe, three of the states that emerged from the First World War—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—have lost their national existence and are now numbered among the sixteen republics of the Soviet Union. The only new state from a practical viewpoint to appear in the European firmament is Iceland, which dissolved the personal union of a common king with Denmark dating from November 30, 1918, and became a sovereign republic on June 17, 1944. An even exchange may be noted in the incorporation by Poland of the Free City of Danzig, once under the protection of the League of Nations and in the creation of the Free Territory of Trieste under the protection of the Security Council of the United Nations.

Although classification is difficult, the new states or near states of Asia fall roughly into a fourfold pattern: independence with partition, independence without partition, de facto or promised independence, and emergence from isolation into the family of nations.

The departments of political science in America's colleges and universities are now numbered in the hundreds, their students in the tens of thousands. The variety of these departments is bewildering, differing as they do in size, curriculum, teaching methods, political complexion, aspirations, and even in name. It is no easy matter to discover what the fifty-man faculty in political science at Columbia and the one-man department of government at a California junior college have in common; yet one thing in common they certainly do have: the introductory course, and the complex problem which it presents.

That the introductory course does present a major problem to departments of political science everywhere was clearly acknowledged by the program committee of the 1947 meeting of the American Political Science Association, when it scheduled a panel entitled “The Beginning Course in Political Science.” The problem was further acknowledged by the panel itself; hardly a person of the many who took part in its proceedings, whether seated at the round-table or holding forth extemporaneously from the audience, failed to show some degree of candid dissatisfaction with the introductory course as presently conducted at his institution. Rare indeed is the department of political science which is willing to let its introductory course ride along through 1948 in the exact shape it assumed through 1947. The urge for improvement is nation-wide, and several prominent departments have gone so far as to relieve instructors of part of their normal teaching burden and commission them to work out definite programs of radical revision.