PRESIDENT DE GAULLE announced on September 9, 1965, that after 1969 France will no longer accept an integrated North Atlantic military defense system. He recognized that in many areas France has “the best reasons for associating with others,” but must retain her self-determination:

so long as the solidarity of the Western peoples appears to us necessary for the eventual defense of Europe, our country will remain the ally of her allies but, upon the expiration of the commitments formerly taken — that is, in 1969 by the latest — the subordination known as “integration” which is provided for by NATO and which hands our fate over to foreign authority shall cease, as far as we are concerned.

THE “emergence of the Catholic layman” in the United States which has been heralded sofrequently since the opening of the Second Vatican Council has tended to do a grave injustice to the American Catholic layman of earlier generations. It is true that many of the leading American Catholiclaymen of the nineteenth century were converts from Protestantism, and there were few opportunities for the first generation immigrant Catholic to achieve higher education outside the seminaries. Nevertheless, the “Generation of the Third Eye” has not produced a philosopher of the depth or comprehension of Orestes A. Brownson, nor a defender of orthodoxy of the knowledge and capacity of James A. McMaster nor has it surpassed such men as Roger B. Taney, John Scott, and William J. Read who were called in to address the first Provincial Council of Baltimore, or Richard Clarke who tried to form the first Catholic union in the United States. The number of prominent Catholic laymen and laywomen of the nineteenth century is large as can be seen in the mere listing of the galaxy that participated in the two lay Catholic Congresses in Baltimore in 1889 and Chicago in 1893. Of all these, James McMaster has no equal in his influence on the religious and theological development of American Catholicism.

THE election of Leo XIII on February 20, 1878, made a deep and rather favorable impression on the French statesman, Léon Gambetta. Quite inadvertently, he recorded it for posterity when, on the very day of Leo's election, he wrote to his mistress:

They have elected a new pope, the elegant and refined Cardinal Pecci, bishop of Perugia. … This Italian, more diplomat than priest, has overcome all the intrigues of the Jesuits and the foreign clergy; he is pope, and the name of Leo XIII which he has taken seems to me to be a most favorable omen. I hail this occasion so full of promise.

SCHOLARS, theoreticians, and statesmen in the West and in the Communist world have propounded numerous explanations of the political, economic and social underdevelopment of Africa and Asia. But few have sought to determine exactly what the leaders of the underdeveloped countries themselves think about the problems of underdevelopment. To what do they attribute their retarded status? Answers to this question are important for at least three reasons. First, their views serve as basic theoretical and empirical foundations for domestic measures designed to ameliorate the relatively backward conditions. Second, their answers also temper and condition their attitudes and policies toward the West and the Communist world. Third, a comprehension of their views gives us an opportunity to assess their current ideological tendencies and thus it provides an added dimension in which to discuss future Western policy alternatives. This paper, therefore, attempts to describe and analyze the various explanations for underdevelopment advanced by the leaders of six West African states — Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal.

A. M. SCHLESINGER, JR., in the second volume of The Age of Roosevelt, contends that what was generally considered a vice in New Deal administration was actually a virtue. Speaking of the many new federal agencies created at that time, he remarks that while each one “had its own distinct mission,” nevertheless,

in many cases jurisdictions overlapped each other and even spilled into cabinet departments. This was sloppy and caused much trouble. Yet this very looseness around the joints, this sense of give and possibility which Henry Stimson once called the “inherently disorderly nature” of Roosevelt's administration, made public service attractive to men of a certain boldness and imagination. It also spurred them on to better achievement. Roosevelt liked the competitive approach to administration, not just because it reserved the big decisions for the President, but perhaps even more because it enabled him to test and develop the abilities of his subordinates. How to tell which man, which approach was better? One answer was to let them fight it out. This solution might cause waste but would guarantee against stagnation …