Materials for the Study of International Relations

Extract

THE student of international relations knows from sad experience what it means to starve in the midst of plenty. His vast sprawling field is the subject of almost endless writing and comment. Memoirs, documents, autobiographies, newspapers, government hand-outs, propaganda publications, and the like pour over his desk in a dismaying stream which grows greater year by year, defying him to master it. If he seeks to preserve his sanity by arbitrarily limiting his interests and investigations to certain geographic areas, he is acutely conscious of the inter-relationship between what happens in his chosen field and developments outside in the terra incognita. If he selects certain topical aspects of his field, such as the study of population, or raw materials, or commercial policy for emphasis, he is quickly enmeshed in the same web of frustrations. He cannot master the entire field and he cannot safely limit himself to a narrow specialization.