Since the reëlection of President von Hindenburg on April 10, eight German Länder have held parliamentary elections. Five, i.e., Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, Hamburg, and Anhalt, held Landtag elections on April 24; Mecklenburg-Schwerin elected a new parliament on May 4; Oldenburg reconstituted its legislative body on May 29; and on June 19 the voters of Hessen went to the polls (for the fourth time in seven months) to replace the Landtag elected on November 14 and subsequently declared illegal by the courts. These eight Länder comprise eighty-three per cent of the population of Germany, and the elections enumerated have brought into clear relief present political tendencies throughout the country: the rapidly growing strength of National Socialism; the increasing dissatisfaction with Socialistic attempts to overcome the economic crisis; the progressive disappearance of the middle parties, with the exception of the Catholic Center; and the relatively slow growth of Communistic influence. The table on the following page undertakes to present the results of the elections and to show the political status in the seventeen German Länder as it is today.

The approach of another presidential campaign should bring with it a renewal of plans for the study of the election process by a number of students of parties and of public opinion. An important instrument for use in any such investigation would be a scale for the measurement of attitude toward candidates for elective governmental office. The writer considers it timely, therefore, to release for possible use a candidate scale which has undergone considerable testing during the past four years. The psychophysical methods adapted to the use of scale construction by Professor Thurstone have been employed in the production of this scale.

The Australian scheme of federal aid includes two types of federal assistance to states: (1) direct financial assistance, and (2) indirect assistance through state-federal arrangements. Similarities between the schemes of the United States and Australia appear in the first type of federal aid. In the second type, however, the Australian system assumes its distinctive characteristics and makes an advance over its American prototype.

In the past, the principal criterion of a capacity for independence seems to have been the ability to foment such forces of violence and potential insurrection as to make the cost of maintaining external political control greater than the controlling power could bear. The real question has been, not whether the subject people were able to stand alone, but whether the efforts necessary for keeping them in subjection conformed to national policy. While the maintenance of such control has invariably been justified by reference to “the white man's burden” and a “sacred trust of civilization,” the nature of this rationalization is sharply challenged by an examination of the actual instances when the time has been found ripe for a shifting of the “burden” to more willing shoulders. It has almost invariably followed upon outbreaks of such violent disorder, if not actual insurrection, as to make it inexpedient for the controlling power to attempt to maintain the status quo. If complete independence is not granted, some concessions of local autonomy and administrative reorganization placate the disaffected elements and postpone the evil day of final settlement.

Since the day when Queen Victoria gave her reluctant consent to allow her Government to introduce a form of pass examinations as a means of entrance to the public service, there has been at least one grand inquest each generation into the operation of the experiment thus timidly launched. The Playfair Commission (1874-75) looked skeptically upon the system of open competition inaugurated in 1870; the Ridley Commission (1886-90) reflected the growing confidence in merit and in the Upper Division; the MacDonnell Commission (1912-15) faced, without making commitments, the new organized service which had already made itself felt in the Post-Office, and which was destined in the brief era of “new world” psychology after the war to entrench itself firmly in the Whitley councils for the civil service.

Republican Germany elected its sixth Reichstag under the "Weimar constitution on July 31. The largest vote ever cast for a Reichstag membership was recorded at this election—about thirty-eight million people, or 83.2 per cent of the qualified voters, casting ballots. Despite the predictions of disorder, and even violent revolution, the election day was quiet and orderly. Thousands of Germans, taking advantage of the liberal absentee voting law, voted at pleasure resorts where they had gone to spend the week-end. A certificate from the home precinct enables a German citizen to vote anywhere in the Reich. In the cities, voters waited in long lines at the polling places; but there was no congestion, for the actual voting took but a fraction of a minute and the whole voting procedure was well systematized.

It is safe to say that very few people in the United States have any appreciation of the importance of the Netherlands Indies to Holland, to the world at large, or to the United States. Yet they constitute a major part in the economic prosperity of Holland, furnish a large element in the international trade of the world, and are significant factors in the foreign trade of the United States. They are also the seat of political developments, resulting from the political awakening of Asia, which are worth attention.

From west to east, these islands extend more than 3,000 miles, or as far as from San Francisco to the longitude of the eastern end of Maine; and from north to south, more than 1,000 miles.

The representativeness of the Soviet system of government can best be ascertained, not through abstract inquiry into constitutional provisions, but by means of an analysis of the electorate and of the elected. Only in this way can the contentions of Soviet apologists and theoreticians be given an adequate test of reality. Simultaneously, such data should disclose a number of sociological and psychological implications. A recent publication of the Central Electoral Commission of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R. gives a comprehensive view of the electorate and of the elected in the elections of Soviets held in the year 1931.

Before the Revolution. Peter the Great, among other attempts to westernize Russia, introduced in 1722 a “table of ranks” consisting of fourteen classes of civil officials (chinovniki) ranging from mere filing clerks to privy councillors. Advancement in civil service also brought with it advancement in social status, but few persons of plebeian origin could reach the higher ranks. Officials attaining the rank of “actual state councillor” automatically became hereditary nobles. The old nobility resented this “corruption of blood;” but with the growth of the Empire, the nobles alone were not sufficiently numerous to render all the civil service necessary for the administration of the state. The admission of non-nobles into civil service was, however, rigidly restricted, not so much by educational qualifications as by stipulations that sons of officials, military officers, orthodox clergy, merchants of the first class, and members of the learned professions should be given preference. Others were admitted provided they were graduated from middle and higher educational institutions with honor (gold medal). Jews were in general excluded, exceptions being made in the case of the medical service.

There are at the present time at least four interrelated trends in the field of public personnel administration. In the first place, emphasis is shifting away from the old evangelism which emphasized the negative aspects of civil service toward placing greater reliance in the perfection of a technique of administration. Secondly, there is increasing dissatisfaction with removal provisions which require a formal hearing with right of counsel before a board independent of the administration. The third phase involves a changed status of the civil service commission: it is to be either abolished entirely or deprived of its administrative duties and confined to quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial activities. The administrative aspects of personnel work are to be placed under a single head responsible to the governor, mayor, or manager.