Since the Chinese invasion of India a good deal of effort has been devoted to a reappraisal of the policy of neutralism which has long been considered to constitute a cornerstone of India's foreign policy. As that policy and reappraisal is by no means confined to India, it might be of more than local interest to examine the concept of neutralism itself on which that policy is grounded. Indeed, the reappraisal has not been sufficiently intense or agonizing because the examination has been too long delayed and “neutralism” has been allowed to slumber undisturbed, tacitly assumed to be an unassailable term in the vocabulary of the foreign office. We shall deal with the related concept of non-alignment at a later stage in the discussion. In order to put both these concepts in proper perspective it will be necessary to say a few words on the logic of foreign policy formulation.

May 20,1936, was a date of importance in Cuban history. Not only was it the thirty-fourth anniversary of the birth of the Cuban Republic; it marked the first time in seven years (as many Cubans maintain) that a completely constitutional government had control of the island's political destinies. On May 20 of this year occurred the inauguration of Miguel Mariano Gómez y Arias, sixth “regularly elected” president of Cuba, son of the Republic's second president, and the man who, at least nominally, will be at the helm of the Cuban ship of state in the immediate future.

Background of Conference Action. Forty-one countries were represented at the twenty-sixth session of the International Labor Conference, held in Philadelphia April 20–May 12, to consider the future rôle of the International Labor Organization and the economic and social policies to be recommended to the governments of member states. This was the first regular session of the Conference to be held since 1938, the New York-Washington session in 1941 having been a special one. As in 1941, there were no delegations from Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Rumania, Spain, and the U.S.S.R. Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq, Liberia, Switzerland, and Turkey, which were not represented at the 1941 sesseion, were represented by government delegates and advisers, as well as Sweden, which sent a full delegation. The occupied countries of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Yugoslavia were represented by complete delegations; also Luxemburg by two government delegates and an adviser.

As compared with the 1941 sesssion, the twenty-sixth was held at a time more propitious to the cause of the United Nations, was better attended both as to countries represented and the number of delegates and advisers present, and was more deeply occupied with specific proposals concerning the future status of the I.L.O. and post-war economic and social problems. The reasons for this were to be found in the events of the two and a half years separating the two sessions.

In the period following World War II before the declaration of martial law in the Philippines, politics and heavy demands for patronage affected the allocation of resources, the administrative process, and personnel policies in ways inimical to the interests of businessmen and technocrats. When faced with intense competition, politicians pressed to employ growing numbers of clients and protégés in local administration. Strong political machines were better able than weak machines to ignore pressures for social services benefitting largely the lower class. The level of political mobilization and size of the lower class increased expenditures on primary education, and expenditures on intermediate and secondary education grew as the percentage of the electorate that was lower class increased. To the dismay of business interests and technocrats, “wasteful” expenditures on local administration and social services were most institutionalized and difficult to cut, while expenditures on economic improvements proved more elastic.