I ShouldLike to begin by making a few remarks about our English universities. Most of the difficulties which face them are similar to those which confront other universities all over the world, but I shall be especially concerned with those which seem to me to be peculiarly important to us in our small overcrowded island, and I shall discuss some of the problems in the new universities which were created in so many countries by expatriate Englishmen.

We live in a state verging on anarchy. We have a government that does not govern. We have a government, but no governing purpose. The level of politics is low; so too is the level of citizenship. Why? Why have we become a fragmented and lawless society—a society no longer united by standards of civilized conduct? Why do youth complain of alienation, of lack of identity? Why do they say their education is without relevance? What forces have undermined the moral consensus on which this nation was founded, and what was that moral consensus? This essay seeks to answer these questions.

TheMultiracial society of South Africa is unique and fascinating. In addition to an African majority, it includes the Cape colored community, the Indians originally introduced as indentured labor on the Natal sugar estates, and a large and long-established European minority from within which Afrikaner nationalism has emerged as the predominant political power. These groups have been progressively integrated in a modern and dynamic economy and consequently subjected to the tensions of an industrial revolution.

The importance of the communist movement in the Soviet Union was demonstrated once again by the international conference of communist parties held in Moscow in June, 1969. To be sure, Soviet foreign policy decisions have always been made on the basis of pragmatic calculations of state interest. Ideology, moreover, does appear to be waning as a motive force on the Soviet domestic scene. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union has maintained a deep commitment to the institutions and forms of the communist movement which go back to Lenin's time, a time which has become glorified, and grossly simplified in Soviet literature as a period of heroic victories. The convictions and institutions of this period have become hallowed: and today Moscow regards the preservation of their forms, if not their substance, as vital if further progress is to be achieved by communism in the international sphere.

WithRespect to its international prospects the leadership of the Soviet Union entered this decade with enthusiasm; it is ending the decade on a note of disillusionment. And there is no area in which this phenomenon is more striking than that of the triangular relationship among the Soviet Union, the United Nations and the emerging “third world.” Both the “ups” and the “downs” of this relationship are to some extent attributable to the remarkable influence (and abrupt departure) of a single dynamic and quixotic personality, Nikita Khrushchev. Associated with his rise and fall, however, were objective historical factors which had a significant impact on the course of Soviet foreign relations. Read in the context of the origins and development of Soviet attitudes on international organization and on the role expected of nations liberated by the downfall of imperialism, this decade may well have marked a turning point in history. The outcome is not yet clear, but it is evident that Soviet policy has gone through another of those remarkable shifts from optimistic certainty to pragmatic reassessment which have marked historic moments in the past. The transition is both interesting and instructive.