Among other curious legends about the Balance of Power which were assiduously circulated by German propagandist writers during the war and even before, and have since been repeated in that part of the Socialist press which takes its inspiration from Moscow, I have noticed a tendency which has spread even to reasonable Liberal papers—with a strong pacifist colour—to ascribe the origin and the birth of this doctrine to the machiavellian policy of British statesmen. Many times have I read denunciations of England on the ground that she invented this doctrine, to which are set down the innumerable wars from which Europe has suffered since the sixteenth century.

Now the fact of course is that it is not an English doctrine at all, although it became for quite obvious reasons, which were inevitable, a corner-stone of English policy, unconsciously during the sixteenth, subconsciously during the seventeenth, and consciously during the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, because for England it represented the only plan of preserving her own independence, political and economic. It matters little when the doctrine was actually first formulated—I had doubts about that and, therefore, I confess without shame, having no pretensions to learning, I betook myself to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and there found that it was first given definite shape as a doctrine by Grotius and afterwards became a current part of the equipment of every European statesman.

The late Professor William A. Dunning is reported to have said of the recent political theories which attempt to replace the conception of state sovereignty by some pluralistic grouping of social forces, that they were “radically unintelligible.” It is hard for political theorists who have been accustomed to regard the conception of sovereignty as a foundation stone and a sort of “rock of ages” for their faith to be told (as one is every day, more or less) that the anti-intellectualistic type of a sociological basis is the only valid one for juristic structure. For that, according to the old rationalistic conceptions of analytical jurisprudence, is indeed to base sovereignty upon shifting sands and to deprive law of any special significance of its own by equating it with social reactions of the most indeterminate character. But the anti-intellectualistic trend of modern political theory indignantly denies this charge. The assumption, it counters, that any legal center of reference can be final in its authority or in its right to command is an outworn Hegelianism, discredited by practice and theory alike. Law is too much a thing of fictions to be taken seriously in its claims, when it pretends to be giving an accurate description of facts in the abstract terms of a pretended right on the part of the state to be the sole author of enforceable commands and the only rightful claimant of men's ultimate loyalty.

Among the traditional political conceptions which in recent years have become the object of almost irreverent attack, is that which ascribes the quality of absolutism to that often elusive, but ever present, double-faced creation of the jurists which bears the name of sovereignty. Text-writers, sometimes in unqualified terms, still persist in claiming for it the unrestricted supremacy which was attributed to it in an age when its wielders everywhere were absolute monarchs; but an increasing number, less influenced by legal theories than by realities, see in it only the “ghost of personal monarchy,” as Hobbes characterized it, “sitting crowned on the grave thereof.”

On the one side the attack is directed by a new school of political writers, who deny its very existence or maintain that it is not an essential constituent attribute of the state. According to them, the notion is useless if not fallacious; the theory is discredited by the facts of modern state life and the term should be abandoned and expunged from the literature of political science.

Home rule in the United States has for many years been confined to the states west of the Mississippi. As late as 1920 Ohio and Michigan were the only eastern states giving their cities autonomy. Since that date, however, there has appeared a tendency in the larger urban industrial states to treat cities more generously. New York in 1923 and Pennsylvania in 1924 have now joined the ranks of home-rule states. But many of the largest states, for example, Illinois, still give no such power to their municipalities, while in Massachusetts it can still be said that cities have the same legal status as “an infant, an idiot or a lunatic.”

The addition of New York to this group has just been rendered certain. On September 2, the court of appeals of the state rendered a unanimous decision declaring the home-rule amendment to have been validly adopted. This ended two months of uncertainty caused by the decision of the appellate division of the supreme court in New York City that the home-rule amendment was not validly a part of the constitution and that all state and local legislation passed under its aegis was void.

Sectionalism is a fundamental and persistent factor in American politics. In the shaping of congressional legislation and even in the formation of the platforms of our national parties, the influence of conflicting sectional interests is of prime importance. The precise nature of such sectional conflicts and the alignment of the various sections upon the leading policies of the time are clearly revealed by an analysis of the votes and debates in Congress on outstanding issues of national importance. Such votes, mapped by congressional districts, show that again and again party lines are broken by the force of sectional interest and that both Republicans and Democrats divide into sectional wings.

A study of the period from the early 1870's to 1890 shows that sectionalism at that time was in large measure the product of the interaction of two movements in our national development,—the rapid expansion of Western settlement, particularly in the trans-Mississippi Middle West (the West North Central states) and the Mountain region, and the marked intensification of industrialism in the older sections of the country, especially in the North Atlantic states. Sectional alliances are flexible and shift with changing economic conditions. The East North Central states, for example, which at the beginning of the period usually vote in alliance with the West North Central and South, by the later eighties are found often on the side of the North Atlantic, a change which may be due to the fact that in the interval they had undergone a marked industrial development which gave them economic interests in common with the older sections. The areas of strongest radical voting move farther West with the shift in the centres of production of grain and livestock; that is, the nucleus of revolt in the Western wing of the Republican party especially is in the newer agricultural regions.

Few words have been used with more different meanings than the word “law.” “International law” has likewise had many diverse definitions. The term, international law, is here used to cover the rules and principles which are generally observed in the relations among states. As laws in general become serviceable as their observance becomes regular, so international law becomes serviceable as its rules and principles are generally followed.

The modernization of international law would imply the adaptation of international law to modern conditions. Conditions have changed since the old days when “strange air made a man unfree;” when all foreigners were enemies; when emigration was prohibited lest all man-power of a state might leave and there might be no available material for an army; or when such principles generally prevailed as that of Machiavelli, which he enunciates in the following words: “that whoever is the occasion of another's advancement is the cause of his own diminution” (Chap. 3).

The development of the family of nations idea, and its extension from the Christian European states to other so-called Christian states, and later to states having a recognized political standing, regardless of religious or ethnic bases, shows the enlarging aspects of international relationship. In order that this relationship might continue, it was necessary that principles generally recognized by those having control of political affairs as worthy of their support should underlie these relationships.

Man, “to be himself,” is “to realize himself.” This fundamental thought became a beacon of light which Ibsen unhesitatingly followed through financial distress, through social isolation, and through severe and often malicious criticism by his contemporaries. To advance the country and elevate the people was Ibsen's cardinal aim, which he consistently strove to attain. He dared to be himself; he spoke the truth when he saw it, and fought for his convictions. If one never commits himself, he never expresses himself; his self becomes less and less significant and decisive. Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self. This was not true of Ibsen. In a letter to Björnson he says: “Had I to decide on an inscription for the monument, I should chose the words: “His life was his best work.” So to conduct one's life as to realize one's self seems to be the brightest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it.”

While it is true that every writer on politics has been to some degree an observer of psychological facts, the significance of this has never been so apparent to systematic students as it is today; otherwise, writings of considerable merit in political psychology could scarcely have suffered the fate of the two books referred to in the present study and have disappeared from sight. Dr. J. G. Zimmerman's Essay on National Pride, published at Zürich in 1758, might very well have been the point of departure for extended research into the nature of patriotism and international attitudes; Gottfried Duden's inquiry, Concerning the Essential Differences of States and the Motives of Human Nature, published at Cologne in 1822, stated problems and suggested methods for the examination of the realities of political power which ought to have inspired a century of minute research. Both books fell flat, and it is only in this day of numerous soundings in psychological politics that it has become worthwhile to disinter them.

That a book about national pride should have been published two years after the beginning of the Seven Years' War is a sharp reminder that European politics had undergone a transformation. The Reformation was undoubtedly a nationalist movement in many of its phases, but it introduced a series of sectional and party disturbances which intercepted the progress of nationalism. These had subsided, and by the eighteenth century the clash of competing imperialisms became not only a basic fact but a fact of which the men of the age were aware.

The fundamental problem in politics is that of the balance of power. It is a balance which has to be struck not only in foreign affairs but, quite as much, in the domestic management of states. Only, it may be suggested, when real equilibrium has been secured, is that efficient, smooth and healthy working of the social system possible which finds external expression in a normal and resilient form of conservatism as distinct from the tetanus of the morbid and hysterical form. But it is futile to speak of striking a balance of social interests unless we are justified in supposing that the units have a certain constancy of characteristics and persistence of activity.

Now the units of social force are, in the last analysis, the so-called ‘free wills’ of the individuals necessarily brought into contact as component members of a society. The contact is necessary: civilization admits of no ‘wild ass freedom.’ To assert that these ‘persons with a will of their own’ behave in accordance not only with an ‘altruistic’ gregarious tendency but also with a differentiating, assertive tendency, is to make a psychological assumption. To affirm that this self-assertive tendency may perhaps be religiously sublimated but that it is under all circumstances inextinguishable, is to make another psychological assumption.

“I'd give them th' votes,” said Mr. Dooley. “But,” he added significantly, “I'd do the countin'!” These words symbolise, in a crude way, the direction of political inquiry in the century prior to the year 1880. Until about that time political scientists were concerned mainly with the processes of policy and law-making. Incident to this were studied things like the nature of public opinion and the electorate, political parties, representative assemblies and their relation to the executive. But the problem of the civil service in the modern state emerged in its full importance not longer than some four decades ago; and indeed, today, we are only in the stage of discovering the questions yet to be explored.

The centre of gravity in political science has plainly shifted from the field of electioneering to that of the civil service. In our own day that machinery serves two purposes of high importance. Firstly, it furnishes the expert knowledge without which parliaments can not, in any adequate fashion, create and enact policies. Secondly, it carries out the commands of the policymaking body. The experience of the United States, of Great Britain, of France, Germany, Canada, Australia and South Africa, shows conclusively that to perform the first of these two functions the members of the representative assemblies have neither the time, the ability, the inclination, nor the machinery. They must come to the permanent office-holders for expert knowledge. And as to the second, a variety of reasons forces them to legislate in general terms and leave the civil servants to draw up statutory rules and orders—to create “secondary legislation,” the enormous and increasing mass of which gives the civil service in the modern state a vast power.

The operation of the newly devised systems of centralized control in state government has naturally raised many questions of the relative duties and responsibilities of department and bureau officials on the one hand and of the supervising and controlling authorities on the other. The process of change from an established method of conducting public business to another, based on different principles and requiring new obligations on the part of officers expending money is bound to be a period of readjustment accompanied by a certain amount of friction. This will be the more certain as the new system differs more widely from the old and restricts more completely the freedom of action formerly reserved to heads of the various state services.

The establishment of the state board of public affairs in Wisconsin in 1911, the enactment of the Civil Code in Illinois in 1917, the enactment of the Ohio Civil Code in 1921, and the legislation of Massachusetts culminating in the creation of the board of administration and finance, all made wide departures from the system of administration hitherto in operation. The essential characteristic introduced in each case was the imposition of an agency of review, of supervision, and in many respects of control upon officers and commissions who had hitherto conducted the work of their respective offices for the most part subject only to the necessity of securing approval of their expenditures by the auditor or controller.

The significance of Populism is being increasingly recognized. In this day of independent voting, and of the “farm bloc,” it is unnecessary to stimulate interest in this phase of American political, economic, and agricultural history. Although its term of life was short and turbid, its relation to other movements and questions gives it importance beyond that which it would otherwise enjoy.

Many have endeavored to explain its rise. To some it represented an outpouring of the dangerous elements of the frontier combined with the beginnings of socialistic and anarchistic tendencies in the cities. An English observer characterized the supporters of Bryan in 1896 as the “forces of political and social revolution.” A western editorial writer wrote that ninety per cent of the leaders of the Populist Party were “destitute of personal or political integrity” and classed them as “vagabonds, slanderers, and demagogues.”

No one who has followed the steady expansion of federal authority over the business of interstate carriers sanctioned by the Supreme Court in the Shreveport Case, Illinois Central R. Co. v. Public Utilities Commission, and Railroad Commission v. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co., will view with surprise the unanimous decision of that tribunal in Dayton-Goose Creek R. Co. v. United States, sustaining the validity of the “recapture” clause of the Transportation Act of 1920. This clause provided in substance that since it is impossible to establish uniform rates upon competitive traffic which will adequately sustain all the carriers needed to do the business, without giving some of them a net income in excess of a fair return, any carrier receiving such excess shall place one-half of it in a reserve fund to be maintained by the carrier for certain specified purposes, and shall pay the other half into a general railroad revolving fund to be maintained in the interstate commerce commission. This fund is to be used by the commission to make loans to carriers to meet expenditures for capital account, and so forth.

The relation of the states and the nation is a topic on which there is a good deal of discussion these days. One week last spring brought to my desk four pamphlets on the subject—all of them from an anti-nationalistic point of view, and most of them emanating from the sovereign state of Maryland. At the same time The Times newspaper carried several articles on the subject. One was a rebuke by the President of the present tendency to look toward the national government for everything. A day or two later another utterance from the same distinguished source called for the establishment of a “federal” bureau of recreation.

But, along with this ancient issue, whose infinite variety time has never yet been able to wither or custom to stale, goes another of even broader import.

Like other branches of learning, constitutional interpretation pretends to a certain terminology or jargon of its own, but just how accurate this is, is indeed a question. And if it be inaccurate, this fact furnishes all the more reason why some attempt at defining terms should accompany a consideration of the question of the constitutional relationship of the states and the nation.

Terms denoting political attitudes, such as ‘conservative,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘radical,’ and ‘reactionary,’ have long been familiar both in popular usage and in the language of political science. Though sufficiently understood for ordinary discourse, their use is likely to lead to a confusion between a political opinion and the type of person who holds the opinion. There is considerable agreement as to what is meant by a radical view; but is there such a thing as a radical type of personality? If there is, we need a method for the measurement and identification of such individuals. If not (and psychologists are becoming increasingly suspicious of type classifications), we must ask what psychological characteristics in individuals are the most likely to produce a radical trend in political and social convictions. The same observation holds for the other familiar attitudes upon public questions.

A logical procedure would seem to be, first, to measure the distribution of public opinion in a representative sample, and secondly, to select from the various regions of this distribution (conservative, radical, and the like) a sufficient number of individuals for detailed study of the motives and traits of their personalities which give rise to the opinions they hold. This paper will be devoted to a preliminary report on the results of such a study.

The Sixty-eighth Congress had only two sessions. Not since the Sixty-fourth Congress (1915–17) had members enjoyed such lengthy vacations, for, of the Congresses since 1900, seven have had special sessions. This now seems to be the rule rather than the exception, so numerous and technical are the problems that confront the national legislature.

The President and Congress. Four months before the Congress met, Mr. Harding died and Mr. Coolidge succeeded to the Presidency. The first session ran its course under the shadow of the approaching Presidential election.

The function of the discusser of a paper is, I take it, like that of Antony at the funeral of Caesar: to bury Corwin, not to praise him. Unfortunately Mr. Corwin has been wanting in the good intentions to pave the way for such a sepulchral performance on my part. He has himself recognized the force of the objections which I would urge to the first half of his paper, had that been all of it, and he has made clear that we cannot tell to what extent constitutional theory is a crutch grabbed to help a wayfarer hobble on to his chosen journey's end, and to what extent it is like a flood or a landslide which sweeps a passive person willy-nilly along its own appointed way. Even worse than this, Mr. Corwin confesses that his game is to indoctrinate his hearers with his own preferred brand of constitutional theory. How can one expose a confidence man who takes us all into his confidence like this? If Mr. Corwin's heart were not as hard as his head, he might have shown more sympathy for his commentator and left him a few soft spots where he might dig in with his intellectual toes.