The appraisal of national conventions as mechanisms for nominating presidents involves many problems of political theory. Who should be entrusted with the task of nomination? Can we reconcile the desirability of popular participation with the need for maintaining a strong party leadership? To what extent does the nominating convention contribute to the maintenance of the political system in which it is imbedded? Does the apparent lack of decorum in this high political body adversely affect the kinds of decisions it makes? What are the implications of increasing the visibility of convention nominations? Any attempt to deal with these and similar questions necessarily involves an admixture of normative and descriptive theory. Postulation of what ought to be can hardly be separated from consideration of the actual or likely consequences of alternative courses of action. The merits of existing party platforms, for example, cannot be fruitfully discussed apart from knowledge of the relevance of issues to voters. In this context, I propose to evaluate national conventions and the various proposals for altering or abolishing them in the light of the degree to which they meet widely shared goals for the American political system.

This study traces the development during World War II of official American attitudes toward Palestine. Utilizing recently released official papers of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Hyde Park, New York, and documentation in the Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, our goal is to describe early American efforts to accommodate policy to the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. While relevant documents are still unavailable, the diplomatic and domestic politics chronicled here may provide better perspective than has hitherto been possible.

The agreement between British Foreign Minister Sir Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval, French Premier and Foreign Minister, in early December, 1935, was a major turning point in European international politics during the interwar period. It placed a premium on Fascist aggression in Ethiopia by proposing that Italy be given actual or de facto control over huge slices of the African country. Several volumes of memoirs published in the last few years throw new light on some aspects of the proposal itself and on the politics of Great Britain, Italy, and France toward the Italo-Ethiopian conflict, policies which at the height of the international crisis produced the Hoare-Laval Plan. In addition, the State Department documents, published and unpublished, are a mine of information on these matters.

The patriotism of the French underwent a far-reaching reorientation between 1871 and 1940. Understood as the readiness to do one's best for one's country, if necessary by fighting for it, the most significant change that affected French patriotic feeling during this period is its shift from the political left to the right. Popular response to the republican call to arms after the fall of the Empire in 1870 was to know no future parallel in its magnitude and enthusiasm. Excluded from positions of political prominence, the working classes and their leaders soon came to think that if they had a patrie, it was not the Third Republic. On the other hand, the right after a century of forgetfulness, rediscovered the old patriotic slogans as the left discarded them. And it used them with considerable skill to its political advantage. But the difference between left- and right-wing patriotism is that defeat in 1870 brought to power a man determined to fight against heavy odds, Gambetta; while defeat in 1940 brought to power a man determined to capitulate before the enemy, Pétain. And yet it has to be recognized that the origins of this transformation are to be found in the policies of the same Gambetta who, no doubt deservedly, is commonly hailed as the Jacobin hero of French resistance in 1870–1.

The visit to the Vatican made by Kaiser William II on October 12, 1888, remains a memorable and somewhat curious event in the pontificate of Leo XIII. One version of this meeting has been given by Count Eduardo Soderini, a personal friend of Leo XIII, who thus far has been the only historian given access to the Vatican archives for this period. But the private papers of the pope's protégé and advisor, Cardinal Galimberti, particularly letters from the cardinal's German friend and informant, Monsignor Montel, suggest that Soderini's account is rather reticent and incomplete. This impression is confirmed by some documents in the papers of Friedrich von Holstein, a key figure in the German Foreign Ministry. A full account of this extraordinary meeting and a better appreciation of its significance is obtainable from unpublished documents in the French, German, and Austrian diplomatic archives, especially from a report made to Prince Bismarck by his son Herbert, a report approved and dictated in part by the kaiser himself.