From Philadelphia in 1787 to Philadelphia in 1937 our minds turn back and forth tonight, to pay tribute to the constitutional contributions of the Fathers and to inquire into the constitutional conduct of some of their sons. If we praise the Fathers as hard-headed realists, we may invoke their example to justify a propensity for realism among ourselves. They were creators. We seek to be scholars. Their aim was to build; ours is to understand and to evaluate. Toward them and their building we may bow in deep piety, but without obligation to let awe or reverence obscure our glance at the work of their successors.

Happily, too, our piety need not dim our eyes in looking at the work of the Fathers. Without falsity of fact or of sentiment, we may appraise their achievement. We need not think of them as demigods or as men who met to lay their fortunes on the altar of their country. We can accept to the full the view that their design was to create a government that would serve the interests they had most at heart. If they assumed that what would be best for themselves would be best also for the general good, in this they were not unique. Even today, men sometimes fuse the special and the general, as perhaps some papers on our program may prove.

Man need not be noble to be wise, unwise as it may be in the long run not to be noble. The advancement of special interests may at a given time conduce greatly to a wide general interest. The wisdom of the achievement of 1787 may be assessed by an evaluation of results without inquiring whether it was the fruit of sacrifice. The results, of course, may be overestimated.

“La politique de toutes les puissances est dans leur géographie,” conceded the man whose famous retort, “Circonstances? Moi, je fais les circonstances,” indicates his contempt for any agency but the human will as the arbiter of human destiny. But since the Red Sea parted for Moses and the sun obligingly paused for Joshua, the human will has been unable to recapture the control over topography and climate exhibited by those forceful gentlemen, and it is probably safe to say that it was by Russian geography rather than by men that the diminutive Corsican was finally defeated. If he is still living, there is at Waterloo even today a loyal guide who asserts with unshakable conviction that neither genius nor skill but a swampy ditch gave that victory to Wellington.

Unfortunately for the political scientist with a fondness for simplification, but fortunately for the statesman striving to overcome the geographic handicaps of his country, neither does the entire foreign policy of a country lie in geography, nor does any part of that policy lie entirely in geography. The factors that condition the policy of states are many; they are permanent and temporary, obvious and hidden; they include, apart from the geographic factor, population density, the economic structure of the country, the ethnic composition of the people, the form of government, and the complexes and pet prejudices of foreign ministers; and it is their simultaneous action and interaction that create the complex phenomenon known as “foreign policy.”

What are the qualifications of the more responsible and more or less permanent professional and technical officials on our federal regulatory commissions? In seeking an answer to this question, data were collected concerning 500 federal officials drawn from the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Power Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The commissioners themselves were not considered.

Where possible, the records of all staff members receiving $5,000 or more a year were examined. This could not be done on every commission, however. The Federal Trade Commission answers were confined to about 80 of the higher administrative and professional employees. In order to get a larger group, a lower salary limit was adopted for the Federal Power Commission.

The report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management, together with the President's message transmitting the report to Congress, was published as a separate document early in 1937. Several months later, nine studies of administrative management in the federal government, prepared by members of the committee's research staff, were published in a series of five separate documents. The message, the report, and the studies have now been brought together in a single volume of approximately 400 pages, conveniently indexed.

As in previous lists, mention is here confined generally to units specifically authorized by law or established by the President by executive order under general authority vested in him. Changes in units created by heads of departments or independent establishments are excluded unless of major importance.

Advisory Board for Bonneville Project. Created by Public Act No. 329, 75th Congress, approved August 20, 1937, to furnish advice to the administrator of the Bonneville project. It is composed of four members representative of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Interior, the Federal Power Commission, and the Secretary of Agriculture, and designated by them respectively.