An important and clearly marked recent trend in American government is that in the direction of systematic planning—local, state, and national. City planning has developed for the last twenty years, and there are now some 700 city planning agencies. The activities of these boards have been halted somewhat during the depression, although some 9,000 workers under the C.W.A. aided in the development of city plans in 1934. On the whole, the cities have fallen behind in the movement they started.

The most significant single event in the urban field is the establishment of a new type of planning agency in Cincinnati, known as the department of economic security, an office through which the employment and reëmployment problems of that community are made the subject of governmental study and action, in cooperation with industry. The director is a man of wide experience and broad social vision in the person of Colonel Waite, one time city manager of Dayton and recently deputy administrator of public works

During the last few decades, legal theorists have given increased attention to the relationship between municipal and international law. Few have attacked the problem with greater acumen than Alfred Verdross, who belongs to that school of Austrians, sometimes referred to as legal purists, with which the names of Hans Kelsen and Fritz Sander are so prominently associated. Verdross' contribution to legal theory has not found as wide an audience as it deserves. This inattention is probably due to the fact that the “theologians” of positivism dismiss Verdross' theory for his disbelief in the “holy trinity” of that school: the personified state, sovereignty, and the will of the state.

Verdross professes to adhere to the empirical method. It will be seen that for him a norm is law only if it manifests itself in political reality. But, being a legal purist, Verdross is not concerned with, nor does he attempt to deal with, this objective actuality, i.e., his is not a sociological study. Verdross has been criticised for not limiting himself to a portrayal of facts and for affirming “a priori international legal norms, viewed as an international constitution.”

Looking over the political scene of contemporary Europe, we observe that the European states are aligned in two fundamentally antagonistic camps of political institutions and ideals. Democracy and liberal institutions are still in force in Great Britain, the Irish Free State, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland, in Switzerland, and in Czechoslovakia; while autocracies at present embrace Russia, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Hungary; also among the Baltic states, at least Latvia and Estonia may be so classified. As for Spain and Greece, notwithstanding that democratic constitutions are nominally still in existence, it is at least open to doubt whether or not they at the present moment should be classified as democracies. By far the greater part of European territory and of European population is under dictatorial rule of one type or another. It might seem, therefore, appropriate to weigh the possibilities of a further expansion of the systems of government which, loosely but rather adequately, are termed dictatorships or autocracies.

Having made some general observations on the aspirations and obstacles of fascist ideology in democratic countries, we shall now attempt to weigh the actual possibilities of a further spread of autocratic rule in the principal states of Europe. Herein we cannot abstain from a certain amount of prophecy, with all the hazards of statements not entirely based on undisputable fact; but we shall try to keep the forecast within reasonable bounds and to fortify it by reference to actual experience in the different countries under survey. Instead of travelling rather haphazardly over Europe, we should prefer a systematic grouping of the different countries which have not yet adopted autocracy. However, we shall find it rather difficult to discover a reasonable line of division; and accordingly we shall deal with each state separately and determine in the course of our journey whether some synoptical conclusions are permissible.

Any civilization may be reduced to two factors, a system of institutions and a system of ideas. By institutions we merely mean collective behavior patterns, the ways in which a community carries on the innumerable activities of social life. The church, the market, the family, the learned society, the trade union, the university, are examples of institutions. We often attribute a personality to such behavior patterns, clothe them with the attributes of a personal will, mind, and purpose; but such attribution is sheer fiction, the product of a purely imaginative process. Institutions are merely behavior patterns—they are nothing else. Government is an institution or a set of institutions. Society achieves certain results through collective political action. The means that it uses are the behavior patterns which we call courts, legislative bodies, commissions, electorates, administration. We idealize these institutions collectively and personify them in the State. But this idealization is pure fancy. The State as a juristic or ideal person is the veriest fiction. It is real only as a collective name for governmental institutions.

With the field of political geography defined on the lines indicated in the preceding instalment of this article, its content may be outlined in terms of the study of a single state area. Naturally, such studies of different states may lead to the comparative study of state areas, just as regional studies may lead to a comparative science of regions. The outline which follows represents perhaps a minimum, including only those topics which I think are unquestionably to be included.

• I. Descriptive analysis of the state

  • A. Description or analysis of the state as a whole

    1. 1. Size

    2. 2. Form and shape

    3. 3. Location in relation to other state areas

    4. 4. Boundaries

  • B. Analysis of the internal structure of the area

    1. 1. Natural landscape areas, or provinces

    2. 2. Cultural landscape areas, or provinces

    3. 3. Areal distribution of significant population groups

    4. 4. Location of the administrative center (capital)

    5. 5. Geographic relations of the different areas thus analyzed, to each other and to the capital

The border position of geography between the natural and the social sciences is fairly generally recognized. Concerned primarily with differences in the different areas of the world, geography studies both natural and cultural features. In some universities, it is included among the natural sciences, in others among the social sciences. In England and America, geographers have particularly cultivated that portion of their field which leads naturally into economics, i.e., economic geography. Much less attention has been paid to the relations with history, although various geographers and historians have studied what has variously been called historical geography or geographic history. Even less have geographers in the English-speaking countries concerned themselves with that portion of their subject which bears upon the political areas of the world. The territorial problems of the war and postwar period, however, stimulated activity in this field both in England and America, the most notable product of which is Bowman's The New World, consisting in large part of the materials gathered for the American Commission to the Peace Conference.

Classification is regarded by some as a very elementary and a very barren scientific device or method. For those who attach most importance to applied science, and to the achievement of practical ends, classification seems a dry and futile procedure. For those likewise who insist upon the importance of moral standards and purposes, the brutally empirical inductive process of classification seems inhuman, possibly even anti-social.

That classification is an elementary task of science, in the sense of occurring early in the whole scientific process, no one could deny, albeit only some one who has had immediate and serious experience in classification can appreciate the advanced problems, both of theory and of application, which can be encountered therein. From the point of view of human interest, something would depend upon what is being classified, whether pearls or potatoes, for example, although it would seem to be an implied tenet of pure science that no knowledge of the universe is without value and that we are not able to say beforehand how important a given piece of knowledge will turn out to be.

When the German government announced on March 16 of this year that it no longer deemed itself bound by the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, a great step was taken toward the realization of the demand for Gleichberechtigung which has been the main objective of National Socialist foreign policy. In view of the forthcoming conversations which had been scheduled to take place at Berlin, the time chosen for this decision was unexpected. The act of denunciation itself had been foreshadowed, however, by the withdrawal of Germany from the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations, and by her actual rearming in defiance of the limitations of the Treaty. It involved no sudden innovation in policy, but was merely a public acknowledgment of the fait accompli; it marked the final stroke in one stage of a long and bitter campaign against the “Diktat” of Versailles.

President Coolidge's appointment of William E. Humphrey to the Federal Trade Commission in 1925 served not only to establish a Republican majority on that body, but also to inaugurate a “new era” in its activities. Humphrey entered upon his duties on February 25, and on March 17 sweeping changes in policy and procedure were announced. No longer was the Commission to be used as a “publicity bureau to spread socialistic propaganda.” The opposition from the “vocal and beatific fringe, the pink edges that border both of the old parties,” would not deter the new Commission from its determination to “help business to help itself.” In his effort to stress the fact that a new course was being pursued, Humphrey emphatically condemned the Commission of his predecessors. “Under the old policy of litigation it became an instrument of oppression and disturbance and injury instead of a help to business. It harassed and annoyed business instead of assisting it. Business soon regarded the Commission with distrust and fear and suspicion—as an enemy. There was no coöperation between the Commission and business. Business wanted the Commission abolished, and the Commission regarded business as generally dishonest.”

In many ways, the city of Chicago is typical of the United States as a whole in the twentieth century. It is a cross-section of the mixture of races, religions, sects, linguistic groups, and economic classes that go to make up modern America. In the past two decades, the political behavior of the citizens of Chicago in national elections has been similar to that of the entire American electorate. Except for the election of 1916, when Hughes carried the city by a narrow margin, the presidential candidate who carried Chicago also carried the electoral college.

At irregular intervals, there have occurred in American party history certain crucial presidential elections which appear to have set the party alignments for several decades. The election of 1896 was such an election, since it determined the supremacy of the Republican party for a period of a quarter of a century, interrupted only by the Wilson Administration, which came to power because of a split in the Republican ranks. A new era in American politics was definitely started by the election of 1932 which ended the Republican dominance. An intensive study of the behavior of the voters in Chicago during this political upheaval will throw some light upon the motivation of the voters in the entire United States.

In any work of classification, the selection of standards is, of course, of primary importance. In the budget of the League, absurd results appear at various points as a result of arranging the contents thereof now according to one type of standard (subject-matter, as “Mandates”), now according to another (kind of service, as “Liaison”). Without coördinate and mutually exclusive standards, no classification can be complete or satisfactory.

One or two of the points made above might, it is obvious, be used as indices of classification if not used as grounds of exclusion. That is, if unofficial international organizations are not excluded entirely, as they logically should be, from this study, they might form one of the two classes of international organizations, along with official organizations. Similarly, organizations may be classified as bilateral and multilateral, in accord with the foregoing discussion, as resting upon mere practice or formal convention, as intended for the observance of some principle or for the taking of some overt action, and finally as relying upon national agencies for their operation or possessing agencies of their own.

Although my subject is President Roosevelt's Latin-American policy (to March, 1935), I shall take the liberty of treating it in a broad way so as to include some developments prior to the advent of the Roosevelt Administration, in order to have a background for the better understanding of the more recent developments.

Although the subject, as stated, envisages merely foreign policy, it should be borne in mind that foreign policy and domestic policy cannot be kept entirely separate, as if they existed in water-tight compartments. A united front in foreign policy is sometimes urged, and it is argued that party politics, as the saying goes, should stop at the water's edge. This, however, is a specious argument intended to put into the position of being unpatriotic those who oppose the foreign policy of the Administration. A united front in respect to foreign relations is no more possible or to be expected than in domestic affairs, because foreign and domestic affairs are closely related.

Although many of our states have exhibited unsettled political conditions in recent months, North Dakota has passed through a unique experience in having four different governors occupy the executive office in six and one-half months. Twice during this period, the supreme court of the state has been requested to determine the right of the governor to hold office, and in each instance it has elevated the lieutenant-governor to the office. The first occasion resulted from the conviction of Governor William Langer of a felony after a trial in the federal district court, and the second involved the constitutional qualifications of Governor Thomas H. Moodie, elected last November.

Following the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, the state of Ohio authorized by statute the creation of a state liquor monopoly, purchased $4,500,000 worth of liquor, and perfected plans for the retailing of it through 187 stores owned and managed by the state. In Ohio v. Helvering, the state sought an injunction to restrain the commissioner of internal revenue from collecting from the state the customary federal excise taxes upon the sale of intoxicating liquors. It alleged the immunity of the state and its instrumentalities from federal taxation and further claimed that the federal taxing statutes were not intended by Congress to apply to the states. The court, speaking through Mr. Justice Sutherland, upheld the collection of the tax, reaffirming the doctrine laid down in 1905 in the South Carolina Dispensary Case. The immunity from federal taxation enjoyed by the states extends only to those agencies and functions which are governmental in character and not to those which are proprietary. “When a state enters the market place seeking customers, it divests itself of its quasi-sovereignty pro tanto, and takes on the character of a trader, so far, at least, as the taxing power of the federal government is concerned.” The Court rejected as “altogether fanciful” the argument that the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and its later repeal had so altered the status of the liquor traffic that its conduct by the state has become an exercise of the state's police power, and hence a governmental operation immune from federal taxation.

The first Congress to replace the old lame-duck session convened with a mighty mandate from the electorate to support the President. It was estimated that 350 of the 561 members in Congress owed their seats to their pledge to back the New Deal. Controversial legislation had to be disposed of in this session if the meeting of Congress during the coming election year was to be brief and decorous. The general tone of the session was indicated by Senator Wagner when he said: “I am sure we all agree that one of the fundamental purposes of government is to give security to its people” (p. 9927). The terms in which this purpose should be expressed remained the major problem of the session. No rallying point for opposition appeared in Congress. In the House, the unimaginative Snell offered little more than grumbles, and Senator McNary was not a consistent opponent. The leadership of the majority party was in the hands of staunch Southern Democrats whose first loyalty was to the will of the President.

The rule that the national government may not burden the governmental agencies of the states by taxation is generally familiar to students of constitutional law. An interesting phase of the development of this doctrine is found in judicial and administrative rulings on the immunity of state agencies under the national stamp-tax laws.

The Early History of the Stamp Tax as Applied to State Judicial Documents. Stamps had been used as a means of securing revenue for nearly two centuries when such a method of taxation was suggested for the United States in 1797. The stamp tax originated in Holland in 1624, when, during a time of “dire necessity,” the States-General offered a reward to anyone who would invent a new kind of tax, and someone proposed “the requiring of stamps on documents and writings having a legal operation or forming necessary steps in suits in the law courts.” In 1694, England adopted this method of raising revenue. Congress first resorted to the stamp tax on legal instruments in acts of 1797 and 1813.

Validity of Constitutional Amendments. The courts continue to scan with rather meticulous care the procedure for the adoption of constitutional amendments. Where the sole purpose of a proposed constitutional amendment under the initiative provisions of the constitution was to provide for the levy of a “syncrotax,” or a tax on the basis of gross receipts in lieu of all other state taxes, a petition with a short title reading “initiative measure providing for adoption of gross receipts act” was held fatally defective in view of the requirement that every initiative petition have a short title showing the nature of the petition and the subject to which it relates. But according to the supreme court of Florida, a proposal to amend the constitution need not have a title, need not be read on different days or at different times, and need not be concurred in by the governor. And the dissenting justices protested that the majority failed to uphold the requirement that a proposed amendment shall be entered upon the respective journals of the two houses with the yeas and nays, showing a three-fifths vote in favor of the amendment. There must be, however, a violation of express constitutional requirements for the courts to interfere with the procedure in the adoption of amendments.

Attention has been drawn recently to the possibility of a Fascist revolution in the United States—by the Dickstein Committee, by journalistic and cinematic exposés of Fascist tendencies, by the revival of the 1918–20 “Red-baiting” spirit and technique, and by the fervent and constant agitation of the League Against War and Fascism and related organizations. Little is said seriously in responsible circles of the possibility of a Communist revolution, that being so overworked a thesis that all are aware of whatever drift in that direction there may be. Hence the present discussion of Fascist tendencies must not be taken to imply the impossibility of a swing to the left, but rather simply to denote an interest in a more novel movement to the right.

In the December, 1933, issue of this Review, pp. 942–955, appeared a tabular review of the changes in major units of the national government between March 4 and November 1, 1933. In the April, 1934, issue, pp. 250–254, appeared a supplementary list showing the changes between November 1,1933 and March 1,1934. In the October, 1934, issue, pp. 872–874, a second supplementary list showed the changes between March 1 and June 30, 1934; and a third supplementary list in the February, 1935, issue showed changes between June 30 and December 15, 1934. The present list indicates the reorganization effected and new units created between December 15, 1934, and June 16, 1935. As in previous lists, mention is made of units only specifically authorized by law or established by the President under general authority vested in him.