The report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management, together with the President's message transmitting the report to Congress, was published as a separate document early in 1937. Several months later, nine studies of administrative management in the federal government, prepared by members of the committee's research staff, were published in a series of five separate documents. The message, the report, and the studies have now been brought together in a single volume of approximately 400 pages, conveniently indexed.

Problems of county and township government continued, during 1937, to attract considerable attention from state legislators, political scientists, and the general public. The legislative sessions of the year were productive of a large number of statutes relating to various aspects of local government and administration; and in several instances local units acted under powers previously granted in adopting governmental forms or procedures more suitable to their needs. Notwithstanding a few backward steps and the fact that progress continued to be slow, the general trend was in the direction of improvement. Clearly in evidence was a tendency to confer additional powers and duties upon the local units; and accompanying this increase in functions were efforts to supply additional revenue, modernize the machinery of government, and provide effective means of control.

The developments of the year will be summarized, as were those for the biennium 1935–36, under the following headings: (1) areas; (2) organization and personnel; (3) functions; (4) finance; (5) optional charters; and (6) intergovernmental relations. To facilitate comparison, the subdivisional arrangement of the article of last year, in so far as it is applicable, will also be followed.

Territorial Consolidation. The need for reducing the number of local government units through consolidation was given most attention in Pennsylvania. Existing laws governing the formation of new townships were amended to preclude the division of existing townships and to expedite consolidation. Other legislation was intended to facilitate the annexation of first-class townships or parts thereof to contiguous cities or boroughs. First legislative approval was given to a proposed constitutional amendment providing that no new counties shall be created except through the consolidation of existing counties. A proposed amendment for the consolidation of Philadelphia county with the city of Philadelphia was given second legislative passage, only to be rejected by the voters in the November election.

As in previous lists, mention is here confined generally to units specifically authorized by law or established by the President by executive order under general authority vested in him. Changes in units created by heads of departments or independent establishments are excluded unless of major importance.

Advisory Board for Bonneville Project. Created by Public Act No. 329, 75th Congress, approved August 20, 1937, to furnish advice to the administrator of the Bonneville project. It is composed of four members representative of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Interior, the Federal Power Commission, and the Secretary of Agriculture, and designated by them respectively.

The Policies and Interests of Great Britain and Holland in the Far East. No traveller in Eastern Asia can fail to be impressed by the widespread alarm and hostility towards Japan's intentions and her economic penetration. This feeling is first to be encountered in Ceylon, where, despite the Singapore naval base, there is a distinct undercurrent of uneasiness among the Ceylonese political leaders. The attitude is much more pronounced in British Malaya, and becomes steadily stronger as one nears Japan. Sympathy for China is the dominant sentiment; but at the same time one encounters the belief that in the long run the Chinese may prove the more serious problem. A very important Dutch official typified this attitude when he remarked that he believed that Japan's ambitions in China would fatally overstrain her resources so that in a few years she would cease to be a menace, “but even after a couple of centuries the problem of the Chinese immigrants will be as serious as ever.”

Canadian federalism in recent years has been passing through the sharpest crisis in its history, a crisis which emerges out of its legal structure and the new financial strains to which it has been subjected in the decade of depression. The appointment in 1937 of a Royal Commission to investigate extensively federal and provincial relations was a tardy recognition by the government at Ottawa that the complex economic and constitutional problems of the Canadian state require thorough study, and informed treatment on the basis of such study. In an article necessarily brief, the background to the malady of the federal system can be sketched in only the broadest outlines.

The years between ten and eighteen constitute a formative period in the lives of all. The mind is then plastic, and it is important to see that the wax gets the right impression. There have been, in the past, numerous youth movements which in some degree have attempted to pour youth into a national mould, but never before have there been official movements embracing the whole youth of a nation as now exist in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union.

The Hitler-Jugend was founded in 1926, when Hitler assigned Kurt Gruber the task of organizing a party youth movement. The first five years of spade work exceeded in results even the expectations of the most optimistic.