The question was raised at the end of World War II as to whether or not international relations could stand as a separate field of study. Views were expressed by scholars and teachers in history and political science to the effect that in substance there was nothing peculiar to the subject matter of international relations which did not fall under other separate fields of social studies. At some universities and colleges there were dissenters to this prevailing viewpoint. Their particular philosophy manifested itself in attempts to create and establish integrated curricula under academic committees or departments dedicated to the broad generalized study of die subject matter of the field. It is still too early to pass judgment with any finality on the merits of these two points of view, the one viewing international relations as a mere duplication of the subject matter of many fields; the odier insisting that diere must be an ordering and integrative approach to die field. No serious student would presume to claim that die study of international relations had arrived at die stage of an independent academic discipline. However, there have been three significant developments within no more than a single generation which illuminate certain aspects of this problem. First we have witnessed the evolution and development of a point of focus or core in the field. Secondly, diere have been die first faint and feeble beginnings of attempts to create a mediodology appropriate for the field, or at least to determine those related mediodologies in the social sciences whose methods and techniques could most usefully be appropriated for the study of persistent international issues. Thirdly, inventories have been drawn up by individual scholars, universities and institutes, of topics and concrete projects which would best serve in the development of general principles in the field and the validation of them dirough systematic inquiry.

Arguments about Soviet foreign policy usually include a lively debate about whether the Politburo is made up of Marxists or Machiavellians. The defenders of the Machiavellian interpretation of Soviet behaviour insist that the Communists are just “power politicians” carrying out the historic Russian program of expansion under a new guise. Until recently this view has been by far the most popular with American scholars and laymen. Few people here even now would take the position diat the Soviet Union's actions are a blind fulfillment of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist theory. Some would, however, insist that an understanding of this theory will facilitate interpretation of Soviet behaviour. Indeed, some Soviet policies and actions make much more sense when placed within a Stalinist frame of reference than as “power politics.”

The question of the final political status of the Saar territory constitutes a barrier across both the French and German roads leading toward a supranational Europe. Every time a step is to be taken toward such a Europe, and every time any sort of difference of opinion develops between the two neighboring nations, the question of the Saar again gives rise, with all passion and all vehemence, to a discussion of national prestige. It is apparently impossible for the two nations to forget the Saar or to treat it with the relatively moderate amount of attention it deserves in accordance with its importance in world politicss as a whole.

I do not intend to write an exhaustive study of the history of Franco-German relations since the capitulation of Germany on May 8, 1945. Such an undertaking is hardly possible in the present state of documentation. It seems to me more useful to concentrate on the essential characteristics of these relations and present them from an objective French point of view, as is natural for a French historian. The subject of French public opinion with regard to Germany has extremely interesting aspects which scholars, educated people from abroad and especially the average citizens of various countries of the world, find it difficult to understand. It is bseyond doubt that, in a country with a democratic constitution like France, public opinion exercises a considerable influence on the government. But conversely the government's influence on public opinion cannot be overlooked. It happens that in France the policy towards Germany since 1945 has been determined by a very small number of men: General de Gaulle, Georges Bidault, Robert Schuman, André François Poncet, René Pleven, Gilbert Grandval (the last to a lesser extent: he is concerned with the Saar problem).

It is as the author of the Ensayo Sobre El Catolicismo, El Liberalismo Y El Socialismo that Juan Donoso Cortés, first Marquis of Valdegamas, is best known. Donoso's reputation as a spokesman of the forces of counter-revolution grew steadily after 1848, and by the time the Ensayo appeared in 1851 he had, so to speak, a readymade audience of both friendly and adverse critics scattered throughout the continent of Europe. But the dramatic clashes of opinion with which the work was received extended its fame beyond the expected limits. For in the Ensayo Donoso not only attacked liberalism and socialism, but, perhaps without meaning to do so, he also offered a challenge to an important segment of Catholic thought and opinion, namely the Catholic liberals. The result was that the conservative publicist who was accustomed to being attacked from the Liberal benches in parliament and by the liberal press in Spain now found his severest critics in a Catholic group which included Bishop Dupanloup of Orléans and whose spokesman was the Abbé Gaduel. Of them Donoso complained to Pius IX that they were “prelates who had turned themselves into journalists.”