The Army's experience in controlling the utilization of manpower during the war is unique in American annals of management and administration. Although there previously was something of a program of manpower control on a nation-wide level, its administration was beset by the lack of enforcement authority, by division of responsibility as among the executive branches, and by the lack of a clear mandate from the Congress. The Army, on the other hand, suffered no such limitations with respect to the body of manpower allocated to it from the nation's resources. Its authority was unquestioned, its responsibility undivided, its mission clear.

Notwithstanding these things, the Army's task in controlling the use of its manpower was exceedingly complex. It involved the training and retraining of millions of individuals for a great variety of unfamiliar jobs, the needs for specific numbers of which could be foreseen with only very rough accuracy. It called for the dispersion and deployment of these individuals to the four corners of the earth, requiring at the same time the maintenance of central control over their use after they had been deployed. It required the shifting of individuals and groups of individuals as among different jobs and types of jobs, and as among various broad tasks or missions. Finally, it called for the orderly withdrawal of these individuals from the military establishment and their return to the civil economy.

Senator George W. Norris was a doggedly righteous man who never stopped battling for the Lord and the common people in a world of sinful men. His long political life, which included seven years as a district judge in Nebraska, ten years in the national House of Representatives, and thirty in the Senate, was a grim and sustained bout with what he regarded as the forces of evil. He tilted his lance against dishonest and corrupt men, political schemers, monopolies and “special interests,” religious and racial bigots, lobbyists and other special pleaders, the “power trust,” and the superheated zealots of partisanship. His autobiography, so long awaited, bears ample witness to the fact that for him life was real and earnest, and usually somewhat sad and despairing as well. But it had its rewards, for Senator Norris was a reflective man, and out of the bitter juices of human experience he always managed to distil a residue of homely moralistic wisdom. He learned that democratic government is pretty largely a process of compromise, and that in that process one must give as well as take. He also learned that, with enough courage and persistence, virtue is often rewarded, and that in the long run the masses of ordinary people can be trusted to reach tolerably reasonable conclusions. There were many disappointments in his life, and a great deal of heartache, but there were also many triumphs, and the net impression of his book seems to be that he felt his life had not been spent in vain. He was richly entitled to this feeling, for it will be conceded generally that he had been a very useful public servant indeed.

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth.”

So concludes the first volume of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Such a statement appearing in 1945 would, except perhaps for the view that the two countries “tend towards the same end,” be truistic. Even the journalists would understand and accept it. It appeared in 1835. To most Europeans of that day, the United States was a crude and bumptious little nation on the western fringes of the world, just as Russia was the half-Oriental, half-feudal state which was not so much a power as a vast expanse of inhospitable steppes. At a time when English travelers were frequently aware only of the vulgarity of American manners, and when some European visitors to this country were most impressed with its picturesque qualities, Tocqueville was much more concerned with the basic nature and with the future of the complex combination of laws, customs, and mores which were embraced within his inclusive conception of democracy. He came here, not to give slightly condescending lectures and to bolster his own feeling of superiority, but rather to observe and report on the operation of a principle of political and social organization. Partly because he had an inquiring mind and was willing to work hard at his self-imposed task, but largely because he was gifted with rare insight and was not prevented from seeing the trend of events by the surface happenings of his own time, his book on the nature of American institutions remains, after more than a century, one of the few invaluable books on that subject.

Ten bills proposing the establishment of “valley authorities” comparable in some degree to the Tennessee Valley Authority are now before the Seventy-ninth Congress, and it is likely that others of the sort will be introduced in this Congress or later ones. Whether any will be adopted during the present session is problematical, but it seems almost a certainty that within a few years the regional authority idea which has received so much publicity as a result of the success of the TVA will be given further impetus by the enactment of additional valley authority laws. The end of the war and the consequent search for opportunities to cushion the shock of reconversion lend weight to this view.

Since the debate over valley authorities seems in no danger of ending immediately, it should be fruitful to analyze the contents of the pending bills, to compare them with the act establishing the TVA, and to point out some of the issues involved. No attempt will be made to appraise the bills or to indicate conclusions as to their worth or lack of worth.

The chief issues are, of course, whether any more valley authorities shall be established, and, if so, where. The range of thought on these issues is underlined by the diversity of the proposals. Two of the bills which are identical—S. 555 and H. R. 2203—provide for the establishment of a Missouri Valley Authority. Four more—S. 460, H. R. 2923, and two more identical bills, S. 1716 and H. R. 5083—would set up a Columbia River Authority. H. R. 2540 would establish an Ohio Valley Authority, and S. 737 would provide a Savannah Valley Authority. H. R. 1824, titled “The Conservation Authorities Act,” would apportion the entire country among nine “conservation authorities” by enlarging the area over which the TVA has jurisdiction and by setting up eight new authorities—an Atlantic Seaboard Authority, a Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Authority, and Missouri Valley, Arkansas Valley, Southwestern, Columbia, California, and Colorado Authorities. A tenth bill, formulated by the Department of the Interior, and presented to the Congress at hearings before the Senate Commerce Committee, would establish a Missouri Valley Authority and would facilitate the establishment of other regional authorities.

In his presidential address delivered before the American Political Science Association in January, 1944, Professor Robert E. Cushman set forth clearly and convincingly the dilemma which confronts contemporary democratic nations. If they suppress discussion out of fear of fifth column and other subversive elements, democracy may perish from within, since constructive critical forces will in all probability be suppressed along with the elements of danger and dissatisfaction. If they permit freedom of discussion and propaganda, those hostile to democracy may use freedom of speech to gain control of the democratic processes for the purpose of suppressing the very democracy which has permitted them to ride to power.

The world has seen this process at work both in Spain and in Germany, where the abuse of parliamentary immunity helped to hasten the overthrow of free peoples. And this type of danger will face the democracies after the present war at a time when emotional attitudes will be marked by greater intolerance. The danger may possibly come from those who desire internal reaction, from those who are members of fifth column groups, or possibly from a combination of both; for in an age of confused purposes national groups willing to link themselves with foreign elements for the forcible suppression of parties and groups of which they disapprove have come to be not uncommon.

Analysis of the position of the Soviet Union in the postwar world may logically begin with internal policy. Lenin himself invited this approach when he wrote: “There is no more erroneous nor harmful idea than the separation of foreign and internal policy.”

It is audacious for an outsider to predict the future course of Soviet policy. Too many factors which only Soviet leaders can know enter into the decisions. Nevertheless, we Americans are about to enter a period in which the Soviet Union will play a major rôle. Our situation demands that we know our neighbor, and this paper is directed to that end. It will discuss the various aspects of outstanding importance from which internal policy is formulated.

Political Theory. Soviet statesmen have retained their basic thinking as to the character of the Soviet state. Commissar Vyshinsky twice restated it publicly during the war itself. In 1942, he told the Soviet Academy of Sciences that “the Soviet State, as a state of the proletarian dictatorship, must be a new type of democratic state for the proletariat and the propertyless, in general, and a new kind of dictatorship against the bourgeoisie.”

“The Arab World,” said Mr. Anthony Eden, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in his speech at the Mansion House, May 29, 1941, “has made great strides since the settlement reached at the end of the last war, and many Arab thinkers desire for the Arab peoples a greater degree of unity than they now enjoy. In reaching out towards this unity, they hope for our support. No such appeal from our friends should go unanswered. It seems to me both natural and right that the cultural and economic ties, too, should be strengthened. His Majesty's Government for their part will give their full support to any scheme that commands general approval.”

The Arab nationalists long ago aspired to achieve the ideal of an Arab union, or federation. But, they maintained, European imperialism had deliberately prevented the realization of that ideal. The Arabs had. fought on the side of the Allies in the first World War in order to achieve their freedom from Ottoman rule; but, following that war, the Arab World was detached from Turkish sovereignty only to be dominated by European Powers who, by applying the principle of mandatory tutelage, sought to satisfy their imperialistic interests. Moreover, the nationalists contended, the Arab World was deliberately divided into separate countries in order to make easy their domination by creating small and hopelessly weak states.

The ultimate disposition of some hundreds of million dollars' worth of property of enemy aliens, now under the control of the United States government, awaits a decision. In addition to patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc., the Alien Property Custodian has subjected to control enemy property amounting to nearly 200 million dollars, composed primarily of business enterprises. The United States Treasury has blocked some 330 million dollars worth of the assets of enemy nationals not involving control over specific productive assets.

Many international lawyers hold that international law requires postwar restitution of, or in lieu of restitution compensation for, enemy private property sequestered during a war; and an important question of policy now presents itself. This article, on the basis of long-term considerations, advocates a policy of restitution.

Statelessness, in its technical sense, is the result of denationalization by the country of origin of a person who has acquired no citizenship elsewhere. A stateless person is also referred to as staatenlos, apatride. Protection and assistance may be withdrawn by the country of a person's origin without juridical suppression of that person's nationality. Such a person outside his own country, though not fully denationalized, is in a position in some measure akin to that of the stateless, as neither has the protection of any government.

Although many refugees are stateless, statelessness is not the essential quality of a refugee, who is defined in accepted international usage as a person who for political reasons has been driven from his country of origin, or who fears the political consequences of his return. He may be stateless, or, although not technically denationalized, may have lost the protection of his government by refusing to return home when the possibility was presented. As a person without governmental protection, he loses the advantages of international rights which depend for enforcement on the action of his home government. Furthermore, an alien who is not a national of any state is denied many of the privileges of a citizen, granted reciprocally through treaties. Such treaties give to the citizens of one state privileges in other states party to the treaties, including the right to work, the benefits of social insurance (such as workmen's compensation laws), and the right to education.