In a recent article in this Review, a social anthropologist, Professor W. F. Whyte, challenges American political scientists to “leave ethics to the philosophers and concern themselves primarily with a description and analysis of political behavior.” Only in this way, the author contends, can the study of politics become truly scientific and not only justify its name but fulfill its function as an important body of knowledge. The challenge presented is not a new, but a vital, one with which all political scientists must inevitably be concerned. For in the answer to it is involved not only the fate of political science as a significant body of knowledge, but, conceivably as well, the very nature of the political behavior that Whyte challenges us to describe with an objectivity divorced from all judgments of value.

In recent times, the point of view urged by Whyte has been perhaps most notably embodied in the writings of Pareto. But many eminent American political scientists have seriously probed the problem of methodology in politics and have arrived at conclusions similar to those urged upon us again by the author of this more recent challenge.

This study attempts to appraise the dynamic forces at play in the shaping of Soviet foreign policy and to discuss some of the recent problems of international law and diplomacy as viewed by the U.S.S.R. In order to place Russia's recent tortuous foreign policy in its proper perspective, it is essential to begin with a résumé of the changing Soviet concepts of law, followed by a consideration of the economic factors influencing these concepts. The shifting line of recent Soviet foreign policy will be discussed in a later part of the article.

Originally, the Soviet concept of law was predicated on transitional socialism; Soviet theorists argued that proletarian revolution has for the first time in history created a socialist state of workmen and peasants. “This is the highest type of state—that of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Having emerged victorious, the working class destroyed the oppressive, bourgeois state machinery and built a new state apparatus of its own. The new form of state, discovered by Lenin, is the Soviet Republic. The task of the workers is further to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Total war may be either the negation of constitutionalism or the ultimate test of its vitality. During the third year since Pearl Harbor, the leading constitutional cases decided in state courts have at last begun to show the operation of the principle of limited government in war-emergency conditions. The judicial veto has been vigorously used. Separation of powers in particular and, to some extent, non-delegability of legislative power have revived to new strength after a period of apparent decline. Minority rights, although only slightly curtailed in the readjustment to paramount war-time needs, have suffered more serious modifications in other respects. Otherwise there has been a notable absence of outstanding civil liberties cases. The courts have vied with legislatures in manifesting a growing conservatism toward the constitutional rights of labor. The position of the state, and especially the position of the state courts in the federal system, has been a continuing source of constitutional development. Problems of government and business have more than lost their depression-era dominance. Signs of judicial distaste for popular participation in the legislative process have persisted.

The bitter controversy in Congress over anti-poll-tax legislation has revealed the need for a careful study of this subject. But rather little discriminating material has appeared. The case for poll-tax retention rests on folklore; the case for its abolition rests on propaganda, which is often more impassioned than exact. Belief in the poll tax is socially correct in the South. Logical argument is only a minor bulwark of the tax. Its main defense is the raised eyebrows that follow any questioning of the wisdom of this voting requirement. The opposition to the tax relies more on logic, but the statistics marshalled to support its case often will not stand up under close scrutiny. This article attempts to tell the story of the poll tax, with particular reference to Texas.

The difference between the poll tax as a voting requirement and merely as a revenue measure must be emphasized. Many states levy a poll tax which has nothing to do with suffrage. Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Indiana—to mention only four—have this tax. Although various means of enforcing payment are used, failure to pay does not disfranchise anyone. The poll tax as a prerequisite to voting is now found in only eight states, viz., Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

Before the war, Australia was a great food-producing country—in fact, she had, per capita, the greatest food supply in the world—yet there was no one department in the Commonwealth government in which the task of administering that food supply was centralized. No constitutional or statutory basis existed for control by the Commonwealth of food production, processing, and distribution. Agriculture was a function of the individual states, all of whom maintained separate departments of agriculture. Since the export of certain basic agricultural products such as wool and wheat was essential to the economy of Australia, a loosely-knit system of marketing boards affiliated with the Commonwealth Department of Commerce had developed to supervise the sale of these commodities. However, several of these boards, such as the Dairy Produce Board and the Dried Fruits Export Control Board, which had derived their powers originally from special legislation, experienced difficulties because of constitutional restrictions. In 1936, the Privy Council declared invalid a series of marketing laws relating to dried fruits, dairy products, and wheat. Section 92 of the Constitution, which requires free trade among the states, was interpreted by the Council as constraining the Commonwealth as well as the states. Under the wartime emergency powers granted to the Commonwealth by the National Security Regulations of 1939–40, these agencies and many additional similar ones received legal basis.

Background of Conference Action. Forty-one countries were represented at the twenty-sixth session of the International Labor Conference, held in Philadelphia April 20–May 12, to consider the future rôle of the International Labor Organization and the economic and social policies to be recommended to the governments of member states. This was the first regular session of the Conference to be held since 1938, the New York-Washington session in 1941 having been a special one. As in 1941, there were no delegations from Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Rumania, Spain, and the U.S.S.R. Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq, Liberia, Switzerland, and Turkey, which were not represented at the 1941 sesseion, were represented by government delegates and advisers, as well as Sweden, which sent a full delegation. The occupied countries of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Yugoslavia were represented by complete delegations; also Luxemburg by two government delegates and an adviser.

As compared with the 1941 sesssion, the twenty-sixth was held at a time more propitious to the cause of the United Nations, was better attended both as to countries represented and the number of delegates and advisers present, and was more deeply occupied with specific proposals concerning the future status of the I.L.O. and post-war economic and social problems. The reasons for this were to be found in the events of the two and a half years separating the two sessions.