Recent critics of the Department of State have complained that “under its present leadership” the policy of the Department has been “ to go slow, play cautious, and be nice.” It is claimed that such a tactic is bound to be ineffectual in dealing with Moscow and Prague. Other critics have complained that the Department has failed to respond vigorously to the charges hurled at it by hostile politicians within the country; the Department seems, it is said, to have tried to avoid or evade or run away from controversy. It depends on public support for successful operations in many ways but does not try very hard to win that support. The second situation differs notably from the first, of course, being a case in domestic rather than international politics, but the choice involved is substantially the same in the art of group dynamics and constitutes an important problem, apart entirely from the substance of the questions at issue between the Department and its opponents, domestic or foreign.