The question was raised at the end of World War II as to whether or not international relations could stand as a separate field of study. Views were expressed by scholars and teachers in history and political science to the effect that in substance there was nothing peculiar to the subject matter of international relations which did not fall under other separate fields of social studies. At some universities and colleges there were dissenters to this prevailing viewpoint. Their particular philosophy manifested itself in attempts to create and establish integrated curricula under academic committees or departments dedicated to the broad generalized study of die subject matter of the field. It is still too early to pass judgment with any finality on the merits of these two points of view, the one viewing international relations as a mere duplication of the subject matter of many fields; the odier insisting that diere must be an ordering and integrative approach to die field. No serious student would presume to claim that die study of international relations had arrived at die stage of an independent academic discipline. However, there have been three significant developments within no more than a single generation which illuminate certain aspects of this problem. First we have witnessed the evolution and development of a point of focus or core in the field. Secondly, diere have been die first faint and feeble beginnings of attempts to create a mediodology appropriate for the field, or at least to determine those related mediodologies in the social sciences whose methods and techniques could most usefully be appropriated for the study of persistent international issues. Thirdly, inventories have been drawn up by individual scholars, universities and institutes, of topics and concrete projects which would best serve in the development of general principles in the field and the validation of them dirough systematic inquiry.

In historical retrospect,* the period between the last great formations of European nationalism, German unification and the Italian Riorgimento, and the second world war, must appear as among the most crucial and decisive eras in the political life of the West. The single, but ultimately all-embracing, phenomenon which gives this period its special character is the emergence of the ethical and monistic lay state—the state which, from the sociological point of view, and hence ethically, juridically and politically, seeks the effective subordination to itself of all forms of social life. In Italy, this process, as the result of conditions prevalent there, was especially articulated; and the logic of the new state was developed almost hyperbolically in certain of its dimensions and aspects. In that same country, also as a result peculiar to its conditions, the diagnosis and the contraindications of the monistic state emerged simultaneously with the emergence of that state itself. The ideas and the forces which were effectively to stabilize and then to reverse the process of the lay state were present and active from the moment that state made its effective appearance. For this reason the history of Italy must possess as especial interest during this period. The man who has been, perhaps beyond all others, the expressive and dynamic symbol of those ideas and forces, is Don Luigi Sturzo. As a consequence his career, like the history of his country, has arresting, if not unique, interest.

We observe today an astonishing spectacle. Just as during the worst period of the French Revolution, Christianity, and particularly the Catholic Church, is under systematic attack in wide parts of the world, in the Soviet Union, in its European satellites, and in Red China. These countries are under control of groups which profess an atheistic doctrine. The official doctrine of the Soviet world expresses the belief that religion will disappear; it permits the application of tactics which strangulate Church life slowly, but successfully. Leading members of the hierarchy have been arrested and sentenced; schools and monasteries have been closed down; religious orders disbanded; missionary work of centuries has been destroyed. All this is accomplished by systematic and carefully planned campaigns. Every means of deception is used. In profoundly Catholic countries like Poland, caution prevails; in others brutal terror is applied. And all measures against Church life are presented, despite the clear atheism of the official doctrine, as measures against reactionaries and political counter-revolutionaries; churchmen are accused of being American agents and allies of Imperialism and Capitalism

For more than a century* private philanthropy has loomed large on the social horizon of American cities. Their governments, as inept and clumsy as they were politically corrupt, were not readily entrusted with delicate social service functions. Happily for urban welfare, Americans not only extolled the great virtue of charity but conspicuously practiced it. As no other people, they have made relief of human misery a part of their life purpose, devoting time, thought and money to the task regardless of its source: in some calamity of nature or in social maladjustment such as urban poverty, industrial conflict or world misunderstanding. Besides giving for giving's sake as befits religious folk—they have characteristically expected handsome dividends on their investment either in the way of improved character development or in more reasonable and just social arrangements. Many wage-earners and social reformers feared, it is true, that the benevolent enterprise might dull the people's desire for a better economic order. By and large, however, charity in America has been an aid and auxiliary of justice rather than its substitute.

Jacques maritain is firmly convinced that every philosopher has some primary intuition that permeates his whole doctrine, and that, consequently, his philosophy can be understood only if one is aware of that primary intuition. For Maritain, as for St. Thomas Aquinas, that primary intuition is the intuition of being (ens) in which both recognize the primacy of esse (the act of existing), and therefore its primacy for the philosopher who studies being. Maritain is constantly aware, from the very beginning of his philosophical reflections, that the philosopher who studies being, starts from the being that is given to him through the senses. This being, which is given to him, actually is but need not be. It is, in short, composed of that which is and the act whereby it is, or, if you will, of essence and existence. Existence must be recognized as having primacy over essence; and the philosopher will be true to reality, and therefore will be in a position to solve problems of reality, only if he respects that primacy.

Friedrich meinecke, the Dean of German historians, celebrated* in October 1951, the month of his eighty-ninth birthday, the fiftieth anniversary of his appointment to a full professorship. In his reply to an adress by the Freie Universität Berlin, of which he is one of the founders and Ehrenrektor, Professor Meinecke called our time great because of its concern with the “highest and most sacred values of mankind, the liberty, honor, right and dignity of the individual,” a struggle which draws “all the vital forces of Western civilization” closer together, labor and the middle class, Catholics and Protestants. This emphasis on individual liberty and on the unity of Western civilization has rarely been heard among German historians. Perhaps Meinecke's personal evolution is one of the hopeful signs in Germany. For he came from the strictest conservative Old-Prussian background: his upbringing was satiated with anti-liberalism, anti-semitism and a fervent Bismarckism. In his younger years he praised the German “ascent” from the cosmopolitanism of a Kant or Goethe to the nation-state of a Ranke and Bismarck. As an old man he began to ask himself whether Ranke had not misled German historiography and the German intellectual development. As far back as 1924, in an introduction to a new edition of Ranke's Politisches Gespräch, he pointed out that Ranke's concept of the powerful states as the embodiment of God's thoughts and ideas ennobled and sanctioned their elemental struggle for power. This glorification of the State became even more dangerous when later German historians abandoned the objective

During the last months of the war, hopes were bright in this country that, this time, not only victory, but also peace would be won. The Fascist nations were being knocked out. The Soviet Union was not a democracy, but, apparently, was willing to enter into fair competition with the United States for the souls of the many nations in a state of indecision; and in this competition America thought democracy was likely to gain the upper hand. A world consisting predominantly of free, independent and peace-loving nations seemed ready to emerge.

Arguments about Soviet foreign policy usually include a lively debate about whether the Politburo is made up of Marxists or Machiavellians. The defenders of the Machiavellian interpretation of Soviet behaviour insist that the Communists are just “power politicians” carrying out the historic Russian program of expansion under a new guise. Until recently this view has been by far the most popular with American scholars and laymen. Few people here even now would take the position diat the Soviet Union's actions are a blind fulfillment of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist theory. Some would, however, insist that an understanding of this theory will facilitate interpretation of Soviet behaviour. Indeed, some Soviet policies and actions make much more sense when placed within a Stalinist frame of reference than as “power politics.”

In the summer of 1943 a group of German prisoners in the Soviet Union founded an association under Russian auspices designed to combat the war effort and government of Nazi Germany. The group, made up of soldiers, officers, and political exiles, called itself the National Committee “Free Germany,” and under that title operated with varying intensity throughout the remainder of the war. It was disbanded late in 1945, and by now has been largely forgotten. But many of its arguments are still effective in Germany today, and many of its members are now politically active in the Eastern Zone. I shall attempt to reconstruct here the history of the Free Germany movement, primarily as an addition to our historical knowledge of the Second World War. At the same time, I think, this account can provide an interesting insight into the workings of a certain type of German officer's mind, as well as a picture of a complete Russian operation in political warfare. With German rearmament an imminent problem and Soviet political strategy a continuing one, an examination of the Free Germany movement seems to be appropriate at the present time.

Since the early 1930's but especially during and since the war of 1941–1945, the Kremlin has made increasing use of symbols and terms designed to elicit “patriotic” responses in the population under its control. While never completely abandoned, the ideology of “proletarian internationalism” has receded ever further into the background in Soviet doctrine and propaganda. The concept of the “Soviet fatherland” was developed in connection with Stalin's program of “socialism in one country” and of rapid industrialization and the formation of a new Soviet bureaucracy. This process was expressed most vividly in connection with the adoption of the “Stalin Constitution” in 1936, and the claim, maintained ever since, that a new type of “socialist” democracy and citizenship had been established and embodied therein.

In the 1820's and 1830's the romantic movement was at the height of its influence throughout Europe* In its origins, among the Lake poets in England and in the circle around the brothers Schlegel in Germany, romanticism opposed the libertarian and rationalist tendencies of the French Revolution. In its later stage romanticism presented a more complex attitude, its imagination turned simultaneously to the fascination of the past and the Middle Ages and to the appeal of the future happiness of free men. Under the quiet surface of the Biedermeier the unrest of the Napoleonic wars continued to arouse in the educated young generation a longing for change, for activity, for a new sense of self-fulfillment.

The question of the final political status of the Saar territory constitutes a barrier across both the French and German roads leading toward a supranational Europe. Every time a step is to be taken toward such a Europe, and every time any sort of difference of opinion develops between the two neighboring nations, the question of the Saar again gives rise, with all passion and all vehemence, to a discussion of national prestige. It is apparently impossible for the two nations to forget the Saar or to treat it with the relatively moderate amount of attention it deserves in accordance with its importance in world politicss as a whole.

That politics should not be a matter either of impulse and whim or of pure ratiocination, hardly anyone will dispute. But there is no settled agreement on the precise role that reason should play in political decisions. Disagreement is aggravated because those who have written on the question usually intended to correct some prevalent error and in their fervor have often fostered other, equally pernicious, errors. As a result, discussion about the nature of political reasoning has tended to oscillate between extreme positions that hardly anyone would uphold consistently. This tendency is illustrated once again in the recent attacks on Rationalism, where the authors, in criticizing the Rationalist misuse of reason, seem to identify all abstract reasoning with Rationalism and appear to distrust all general principles.

The Russian-Ukrainian controversy over the status of the Ukraine dates as far back as 1654. In that year, Bohdan Khmelnitzkyj, Hetman of Ukraine, taking into account the constant dangers of Polish and Tartar aggressions, concluded a mutual assistance treaty, called “Perejaslavka Uhoda,” with the Moscovite Tsar Alexej. The treaty provided for stationing a small military detachment of Tsarist forces in the Ukraine. The Russian Tsar pledged to respect the sovereignty of the Ukraine by not interfering in the internal, political and social life of the country. However, after the occupation of strategic military bases, these solemn vows were gradually ignored and forgotten. Tsarist agents, sent to the Ukraine under various pretexts, conducted themselves as conquerors rather than as allies of an independent power. Recognizing his historical error in voluntarily submitting the Ukraine to Russian rule, Khmelnitzkyj mad vain preparations to drive out the Tsar's forces. His sudden death on August 6, 1657, interrupted his plans, and gave the Russian officials the opportunity to impose, without consulting the local government, more and more of the Tsar's laws and decrees upon the Ukraine. After Khmelnitzkyj's death, the Moscovite rulers found themselves in a very favorable situation. There was no leadership in the Ukraine capable of combatting the Russian occupation policy and of inspiring the Ukrainian people, exhausted in wars with the Tartars and Poles, to resist the forcible restrictions governing the Ukraine's independence.

I do not intend to write an exhaustive study of the history of Franco-German relations since the capitulation of Germany on May 8, 1945. Such an undertaking is hardly possible in the present state of documentation. It seems to me more useful to concentrate on the essential characteristics of these relations and present them from an objective French point of view, as is natural for a French historian. The subject of French public opinion with regard to Germany has extremely interesting aspects which scholars, educated people from abroad and especially the average citizens of various countries of the world, find it difficult to understand. It is bseyond doubt that, in a country with a democratic constitution like France, public opinion exercises a considerable influence on the government. But conversely the government's influence on public opinion cannot be overlooked. It happens that in France the policy towards Germany since 1945 has been determined by a very small number of men: General de Gaulle, Georges Bidault, Robert Schuman, André François Poncet, René Pleven, Gilbert Grandval (the last to a lesser extent: he is concerned with the Saar problem).

At the end of hostilities Hungary was a defeated and conquered country. In point of time she was the last of the Axis satellites to conclude an armistice agreement with the three major Allies (January 20, 1945). Unlike the military developments in Rumania and Bulgaria, the Hungarian Army had not turned against the Germans — a fact which did not improve Hungary's international position in the Armistice period. The country was isolated, with neither diplomatic representatives abroad nor friends among the victorious states. She was occupied by Russian troops, and until September, 1947 lived under the strict rule of the Russiandominated Allied Control Commission, a fact which greatly reduced Hungarian sovereignty, both in internal and foreign affairs. The terms of the armistice were extremely harsh. American endeavors in Moscow, aiming at more generous armistice treaties, had failed. Moreover, the Russians were unwilling to provide explicitly for equal participation of the three Allied governments in the work of the Allied Control Commission in Hungary in the period following the termination of hostilities against Germany.

It is as the author of the Ensayo Sobre El Catolicismo, El Liberalismo Y El Socialismo that Juan Donoso Cortés, first Marquis of Valdegamas, is best known. Donoso's reputation as a spokesman of the forces of counter-revolution grew steadily after 1848, and by the time the Ensayo appeared in 1851 he had, so to speak, a readymade audience of both friendly and adverse critics scattered throughout the continent of Europe. But the dramatic clashes of opinion with which the work was received extended its fame beyond the expected limits. For in the Ensayo Donoso not only attacked liberalism and socialism, but, perhaps without meaning to do so, he also offered a challenge to an important segment of Catholic thought and opinion, namely the Catholic liberals. The result was that the conservative publicist who was accustomed to being attacked from the Liberal benches in parliament and by the liberal press in Spain now found his severest critics in a Catholic group which included Bishop Dupanloup of Orléans and whose spokesman was the Abbé Gaduel. Of them Donoso complained to Pius IX that they were “prelates who had turned themselves into journalists.”

Three events make the year 1951 significant in the history of the Fourth Republic. The first, and most important, was the national elections of June 17. The second was the reversal of an ageold trend by the vote of financial assistance to private, mostly Catholic, schools. The third was the provincial elections (elections cantonales) of October 7 and 14.

Political thought in the United States certainly bears out the truth of the observation that infancy impressions are the determining factor of a nation's as well as of an individual's outlook. Americans had to wrest their independence from an imperialistic British government headed by a king. This became the source of three indelible notions: first, crowns are all suspect; secondly, imperialism is something specifically British; thirdly, since British foreign policy has been imperialistic, its methods stand condemned, and one of them is known as the balance-of-power. Conclusion: away with that balance!

So it happened that the second half of the twentieth century had to dawn before American statesmen and generals realized and proclaimed the necessity of the balance-of-power and before the American public was ready to be told so. On May 29, 1951, there occurred a significant exchange in the Senate inquiry on the MacArthur ouster.

Current proposals for reform of the electoral college system are embodied in three plans which appear to be designed to enable the “conservatives” to elect a President of the United States. Since 1932, the present electoral college system has compelled both parties to nominate presidential candidates who advocate policies devised to win the votes of conscious ethnic, religious, and economic groups in metropolitan centers, where these minorities hold a balance of power in populous states controlling large blocs of electoral votes. Consequently, all recent presidential candidates have supported social security, collective bargaining, and civil rights legislation. An inspection of congressional roll calls discloses the rather obvious fact that a number of Republicans and southern Democrats hardly approve of these and other so-called Fair Deal measures.