One of the constant worries of the United States, since the role of a dominant world-power has been thrust on her, is the situation of Latin America. Relations with Canada require thought and preoccupation but they produce no deep concern. Canada and the United States understand each other and they form their policies in terms of friendly adjustment. Yet the same is not true when we consider the bloc of nations stretching to the south of the Rio Grande. They form two thirds of the geographic stretch of the western hemisphere, and they constitute a population equal to ours. The dependence on Latin America on the part of the United States in her capacity as an international power is evident. What is not evident is the way to make our friendship with our southern neighbors a more stable thing than the fragile arrangement which confronts us in the present.

The periods in American history when learned men and public leaders effectively join hands to face current problems are comparatively few and far between. The paucity and long intervals are not for want of the frequent, mutual exhortation of theorists and practitioners to cooperate and give aid that is sorely needed. The nature of the demands they lay upon each other are often beyond reach. Theorists would like full blueprints of the various elements in the process by which decisions have been made. Practitioners complain that learned men find it difficult to think and act within the limits prescribed by real situations. Moreover, the “academic approach to policy problems is apt to exhibit two tendencies: the first is a tendency toward abstraction and generalization; the second is a tendency to emphasize historical analogies.” Decision-makers grow impatient with the judicious and painstaking habits of the scholar, his quest for knowledge of both past and present, and the luxury of reserving judgment in which he indulges.

The question of tradition,* its nature as well as the binding power it might have, was formulated in a most precise and ideal manner at the beginning of the modern age. This occurred in the course of a remarkable and rather dramatic episode in the history of ideas in which several important characters of the time took part, Galileo, Descartes, and Pascal. Pascal did more than take part. At the age of twenty-four he attempted a critical estimate of the sum total of historical knowledge by clearly defining tradition with respect to the range and limits of its validity. This thesis can be found in a short dissertation bearing a title which at first glance looks rather strange: “Fragment of a Preface for a Tract on Empty Space” —the tract itself was never written.

From the time of Metternich to that of Hitler and Stalin no other figure cast so large a shadow as Bismarck on the pages of European and world history. He began his career in 1862 as the hated minister of a faltering monarchy and of a state which for decades had accepted a secondary position in both Germany and Europe. And yet the political virtuosity of this Pomeranian Junker made him the decisive influence in German political life and the arbiter of European diplomacy for nearly a quarter of a century.

The history of ancient Rome has had a perennial fascination for statesmen and publicists in their search for clues to an understanding of the problems of the modern world. In France, whether under Louis XIV, during the Reign of Terror, or under Napoleon, Rome was the school of statesmen. As Britain and Germany drifted deeper into their fatal rivalry before 1914, the ancient struggle of Rome and Carthage was repeatedly recalled, and each of the rivals identified itself with Rome, its opponent with Carthage. Today again, we seek to learn the wisdom, and to avoid the fatal decisions, of the statesmen of ancient Rome.

National self-determination and the United Nations are modern concepts of political thought. Of the two the first is older and has struck much stronger roots. Its origin can be traced back to the American and French revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century. The latter gained recognition only in the period of the First World War. Both owe their conceptual frame and their ideological content to modem Western civilization, above all to Anglo-American thought. Yet the two concepts are to a degree contradictory: the United Nations envisages an international or supranational order at a time when nationalism—the insistence on national independence, self-determination, and self-expression as supreme political values and emotional guides—has for the first time in history become a world-wide phenomenon.

Cultural exchange* between the United States and other countries is, in large part, simply a function of educational, scientific, and cultural life within the United States itself. In the midst of the continuing debate on education and science, and the role of the Government, we hear of proposals for the pooling of scientific skills among the North Atlantic nations; of the recent establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency. We learn, perhaps with some surprise, that most nations and practically all general inter-Governmental organizations give some attention, and even some money, to international cultural activities. These include the Organization of American States, NATO, SEATO, and the United Nations with its specialized agencies, especially UNESCO. We read in the daily newspapers of the recent agreement for cultural exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union and its consequences, and we realize that this kind of thing, in the United States as elsewhere, has become very much a matter of Government interest, negotiation and action.

Herodotus, who has been rightly called the Father of Western history, tells us in the first sentence of the Persian Wars that the purpose of his enterprise is to preserve that which owes its existence to men (ta genomena ex anthrôpôn), lest it be obliterated by time, and to bestow upon the glorious, wondrous deeds of Greeks and Barbarians sufficient praise to assure their remembrance by posterity and thus make their glory shine through the centuries.

Everywhere* in the world today, we see forces defying each other, preparing to invade other countries as well as organizing resistance to invasion. Is it possible that out of this turmoil of interests, emotions, opinions, impressions, a constructive and coherent international life can emerge? Are we simply at the mercy of events and of conditioned reflexes, or is it possible that a constructive foreign policy can be conceived by rational thought and pursued consistently in the light of reason?

InAustralian Hopes and Fears Colin Clark appears at one point or another in all of his several guises: statistician, economist, newspaper commentator on public affairs, and exponent of a Roman Catholic Weltanschauung. He has written several earlier books which embrace the first two and steadiest of his regular employments, notably The Conditions of Economic Progress, and he has written a very great deal in a miscellany of newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets which falls under the latter heads, but this, I think, is the first occasion on which he has given expression to the several facets of his mind in a single book. The result is utterly fascinating, not least because of Clark's extraordinary capacity for stating highly provocative views in a “dead pan” fashion, as though uttering dusty platitudes. No reader unacquainted with the Australian scene will fully appreciate just how often Clark sets a cat among the pigeons, nor how adept he is at redefining cats and pigeons. The reader must proceed, constantly on the alert for what on earth is coming next, this in spite of the fact that much of the book is ostensibly straight exposition. Clark's willingness to take the risks of discrimination and judgment within his particular frame of reference keeps his writing lively. The question one really has in mind all along is whether or not he takes all the facts into account before phrasing his pointed conclusions.

The extension of Communist Russian domination into Outer Mongolia in 1920 and of Communist Chinese domination over Inner Mongolia as well as Tibet in 1949 and 1951 created the problem of relations between communism and Lamaism, the religion and main cultural force of these areas. Communist policies towards Lamaism provide no exception to Communist religious policies as a whole. Nevertheless, the Communist appeal seems to have found some points of departure in certain Lamaist notions. These Lamaist ideas may, therefore, have a political relevance in the penetration of Communist ideas into the areas of Lamaist culture.

Political theory is not an independent realm of thought. Ultimately it must always refer back to some metaphysical presuppositions of Weltanschauung that is not in itself political. This does not imply that every metaphysical position entails logically necessary political consequences. But it does mean that implicitly or explicitly political theories depend on more general religious, epistemological, and moral considerations. This condition of political thinking serves to explain much of the narrowness of contemporary political theory. For the dominant currents of philosophy neither can, nor wish, to provide a basis for political speculation, which is increasingly regarded as an undisciplined form of self-expression. On the other hand, the naive hope that political studies might fruitfully emulate the methods of the natural sciences, and so share their success, has all but evaporated. The result is that political theory is now concerned to insist on its own limitations, to be critical and even negative in character. This is not a new thing. The lack of philosophical inspiration combined with the decline of “scientific” aspirations has plagued politically sensitive minds at least since the very beginning of the present century. And, from the first, one of the responses to this frustration has been the effort to escape philosophical difficulties by grasping at intuitive short-cuts to truth. The most remarkable of these flights to intuition was political Bergsonism. Moreover, this is not an entirely closed chapter in the history of ideas. Even if Bergson no longer enjoys his earlier popularity, he is still widely read, especially in America. Again, the recent vogue of existentialist “politics” points to an analogous trend, while the penchant for “action,” which is inherent in intuitive politics, is as strong as ever among French intellectuals.