The American Political Science Association was founded December 30, 1903, at New Orleans. Its organization was the outgrowth of a movement looking toward a national conference on comparative legislation. A group having the matter in charge held a meeting in December, 1902, at Washington, the call for which stated that the formation of an American Society of Comparative Legislation had been suggested as “particularly desirable because of the complexity of our system of federal government.” Interest in legislation in general and in the problems presented by the lawmaking activities of the federal and state agencies in particular was, therefore, the starting point from which proceeded the wider range of interests which gave rise to this Association. The preliminary meeting in Washington indicated that if a new national society were to be formed it might be well to enlarge its scope so as to embrace the whole of political science, of which comparative legislation is an important part. A year later, thanks to the coöperation of the American Historical Association and of the American Economic Association, which were having joint meetings in New Orleans, opportunity was given to the group to form an organization, the members of which were in large part members of one or both of the older Associations. The adoption of the constitution of this Association was the result. In a way, therefore, the American Political Science Association is the god-child of the American Historical and the American Economic Associations. All but two annual meetings have been held jointly with one or both of the older bodies, indicating not only a factor of common membership but also a large measure of common interests and kindred endeavors.

Whatever may be the present attitude of the people of the United States toward the League of Nations, it now seems clear that the Government of the United States has come to feel the necessity for such an international organization. For several years past, official American coöperation with the League has steadily increased. The situation has now developed to a point where the current formulae for explaining the official attitude are to some extent misleading, and it may serve a useful purpose to trace the changes which have occurred since 1920, to survey the situation as it now exists, and to forecast some of the probabilities for the future.

Let us start with the fact that the United States has not ratified the Covenant of the League of Nations and has not accepted the place provided for her in the Assembly and the Council of the League. It is beside the present purpose to explain that fact, to attempt to say whether it is due to drift or to design, or to offer any argument for changing it. Whatever the seven millions of voters who constituted President Harding's majority in 1920 may have desired at that time, the Government of the United States has since interpreted their votes as a determination that the United States should not accept membership in the League, and it has proceeded on the theory that that issue is closed. But if this fact is to be taken as the starting-point, there still remains a question as to the account to be taken by the Government of the United States of other important facts, viz., that the League of Nations continues to exist, that more than fifty governments are vigorously pushing its work and effecting through it their coöperative action, and that much of the organized international life of our time is centered at Geneva.

In the constitution of Massachusetts is found the following: “In the government of this commonwealth the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers or either of them; to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.” This is probably the most explicit statement of the doctrine of separation of powers to be found in the constitution of any of the states of this Union. While the doctrine has been set forth in other constitutions in other language, the constitutions of all the states as construed and interpreted have come to have substantially the same meaning. For more than a century, lawyers, courts, political scientists, publicists, and the people generally regarded the separation of the government into coördinate departments as one of the corner-stones of our liberties.

Montesquieu, who had no doubt derived his ideas upon the subject from the writings of Locke and a study of English law, in 1748 published his great work, The Spirit of Laws. In this treatise he gave a new exposition of the doctrine of separation of powers and the reasons for it, in a form which gave it wide currency in the English-speaking world; but this exposition was intended by Montesquieu to be a statement of political theory, and was so accepted by political writers of the time.

I start with an assumption. It is an assumption which can be supported by impressive evidence, and which political experts, familiar with that evidence, will be disposed to admit: campaign expenditures, in many parts of this country, tend to be not only excessive but also corrupt.

This corruption is particularly noxious because it affects the very foundations of the democratic process. Therefore, when once its existence has been recognized, the application of a remedy becomes imperative. Only one question can arise: What is the appropriate remedy?

Twenty years ago Mr. Perry Belmont was prescribing publicity. His pharmacopoeia resembled, in its simplicity, that of the late Sir William Osier, which was confined to nux vomica and hope. According to his belief—and it is shared by many today—the best method of treatment is to tell the patient what is wrong with him and let him cure himself. In a word, if the law requires publicity for the details of campaign contributions and expenditures, an informed public opinion, becoming aware of unhealthy conditions, can be relied upon to correct them.

Experience makes it plain that this prescription contains too much hope and not enough nux vomica. Public interest in campaign expenditures and the abuses connected with them is spasmodic. It can be roused from its chronic torpor only by the shock of some particularly scandalous or dramatic revelation. The shock comes at frequent intervals.

During the important political year 1928 no fewer than five separate congressional committees were engaged in investigating various phases of the problem of campaign funds. First, the Reed committee, which was appointed by resolution of the 69th Congress to investigate the elections of 1926, was continued in existence so that it could wind up its work. In addition, it was given authority by a new resolution of the 70th Congress to investigate the New Jersey senatorial primary of 1928. Second, the committee on privileges and elections of the Senate was authorized to hear and determine the Wilson-Vare election contest in Pennsylvania. A sub-committee, with Senator Waterman as chairman, was selected on January 27 to perform this task. Third, the Senate created a special committee to investigate pre-convention and election expenditures in the campaign of 1928. Senator Steiwer was appointed chairman of this committee. Fourth, a special House committee was appointed on the day before the close of the session to look into the campaign expenditures of 1928, with Congressman Lehlbach of New Jersey as chairman. Finally, the Senate by resolution authorized the committee on post offices and post roads, or any sub-committee thereof, to investigate the alleged sale of Southern postmasterships, and Senator Brookhart was appointed chairman of the sub-committee.

The Reed committee held hearings in April and May in connection with the Wilson-Vare contest in Pennsylvania, and in June in connection with the New Jersey senatorial primary. These investigations did not lead to any particularly valuable disclosures, although they produced some interesting and enlightening information about the Vare machine.

In all countries, the publications of the foreign office hold a peculiar position among government documents. Statesmen appear to be more reticent in informing the public on foreign relations than in regard to any other governmental function. This reticence seems to obtain in democracies as well as autocracies. There are exceptions, such as post-war Germany and Soviet Russia, where the new governments entered upon a policy of disclosing almost everything in past diplomacy for the purpose of exposing the incompetency of the Hohenzollern and Romanov régimes. But these exceptions are conspicuously few. It is, of course, too much to expect foreign offices to publish all diplomatic correspondence and official reports. Some of these communications concern private persons whose affairs should not be exhibited to public gaze. Other papers contain tentative proposals and counter-proposals made in the course of negotiations, and should not, in fairness to all governments involved, be published at the time. Finally, much of the correspondence is merely routine. Nevertheless, it will probably be generally conceded that in a democracy the people ought to have opportunity for wide information regarding the conduct of foreign relations.

In the United States the chief official sources of information include: the President's annual message, Foreign Relations, the Treaty Series, mimeographed press releases, the Register of the Department of State and other lists, and occasional documents issued by the Department of State. It has been the practice of the President to devote a large portion of his annual message to Congress to a resumé of international relations for the year.

A protective tariff is constitutional. While most of us—Democratic party platforms to the contrary notwithstanding—had suspected that this was true, the Supreme Court, curiously enough, never passed on the question until its decision in Hampton v. United States. In that case the plaintiffs attacked the validity of the Tariff Act of 1922 on two grounds. In the first place, the so-called flexible tariff provision embodied in Section 315 was alleged to authorize an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the President. That section provides, in substance, that when the President, upon investigation, finds that differences in the cost of production here and abroad of articles produced in this country are not equalized by the tariff duties fixed by the act, he shall thereupon fix such new rates as will equalize these differences. The Court had no difficulty in rejecting this contention under the authority of Field v. Clark, in which the reciprocity sections of the Tariff Act of 1890 were sustained. Chief Justice Taft, speaking for a unanimous Court, reviews the general theory of the separation of powers and the doctrine that legislative power may not be delegated. He emphasizes, however, that each department may properly call upon the others for assistance “so far as the action invoked shall not be an assumption of the constitutional field of action of another branch.” The scope and character of this assistance, furthermore, “must be fixed according to common sense and the inherent necessities of the governmental coördination.”

“Italian unification” is an old phrase, today acquiring new meaning. Whatever Garibaldi would have thought of D'Annunzian and Fascist squadrism, however Cavour would have viewed the modern cult of Machiavelli, avowed by Mussolini, one may be sure that Mazzini would have been shocked at the chauvinist absolutism now proudly boasted by the Fascist régime: absolutism in the sense of an executive guided by its own intuitions and conscience, free from political criticism or parliamentary control; absolutism also in a sense for which English words are wanting, except as we boldly transliterate, and hope that “intransigence,” “totalitarianism,” will be understood to mean an all-inclusive hundredpercentedness. Italy is called by Mussolini “monolithic,” all of one piece, tolerating anti-Fascist criticism no more than other states tolerate treason; all in and for Fascism, nothing against Fascism. Indeed, Fascism, without ceasing to be a party, has become the state. For parties in Edmund Burke's sense there is supposed to be no more need than for the factions Washington abhorred. Opposition such as is normal in the Cavourian scheme of parliamentary government—responsible critics, loyal and ready to take their turn in governing—is superfluous, a mere obstacle or obstruction to efficiency. None is permitted—in parliament, in press, in platform, or even in theory.

What has just been said is presented, not by way of judging, but only of summarizing, the attitude firmly (courageously or arrogantly, according to the observer's prejudices) maintained by the powers that be in Italy today. The recent months have seen several important steps taken in the direction of institutional realization of this view.

It is one of the surprising things in contemporary political science that at a time when what is known as “the pragmatic revolt in politics” is an outstanding phenomenon, and when lavish attention is being bestowed upon the histrionic adventures of Italy into the fields of political realism, the experiments of the Spanish Directory tend to be passed over without serious investigation. Spain has been treated as though her experiment were only a futile or less meaningful, slavish imitation of the work of Il Duce, as though the Iberian peninsula were witnessing only in parvo the monumental experiments of Fascism. This easy dismissal of the work of the Directory in Spain may be comforting in its simplicity, but it is a distinct over-simplification and an attempt to argue from analogy where the basic and essential elements of a similar situation are lacking. Merely the fact of dictatorship, merely the supposed association of an armed partisan force with the dictator in power, merely the fact of the abrogation of public liberties in each instance have been taken to constitute the essential elements of comparison and identification. The less dramatic character of the events in Spain has tended to obscure the far-reaching differences between the régimes centering in Rome and Madrid.

The system of soviet federation established by the constitution of 1923 represents a peculiar inversion of the federative idea. The framers of this instrument of government were faced with the solution of a problem of a complex and conflicting nature. The creators of the new Russian government, the leaders of the Communist party, desired to secure, on the one hand, the establishment of the rule of the proletariat; they hoped to build up a government that should develop into “a complete unity of workingmen of various nations” in “one centralized democratic republic.” On the other hand, the former Russian Empire had been made up of numerous nationalities. These distinct nationalities remained under the new Soviet régime and were insistent in their claims to self-government. The creators of the Soviet constitution were, therefore, confronted with the reconciliation of the principle of the rule of the proletariat with the principle of the freedom and self-determination of nationalities. In terms of governmental structure, they attempted to fit together these two incompatible political ideas: the practice of absolutism with the idea of federalism. The bolshevist oligarchs, rabid adepts of centralization, were obliged to acknowledge the rights of the nationalities to a certain amount of independence within the soviet state. The resulting system of soviet federation was written into the constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which was approved by the Central Executive Committee of the Union on July 3, 1923, and which was ratified by the Second Congress of Soviets in January of the next year.