Our present task is one of definition. We are students of political science in its international phase, and we use history as a means. We operate in a marginal area that overlaps two fields, government as that term is usually understood, and the history of international affairs. How shall we bound this marginal area, what are its relations to those other two, more familiar conceptions?

We are forced to this study by the World War. Modern history has had an immemse expansion for the reason that a tremendous political event has taken place and the world must know why it happened, the causes as well as the occasions and events. A voluminous literature is appearing on the doings and motives of Great Powers, on the rise of nationalities and their crude strivings, on the remapping of state boundaries, and the development of spheres of economic influence. We welcome, for instance, Mr. Gibbons' recent book on World Politics, a clear and useful summary of the recent history of certain political entities called world powers and their policies. It is the story as he calls it of “the struggle of European nations for world power.” The struggle is there. More power to him in his description of the contestants and the contest. But we view all this as only preparatory for our task.

Among the responsibilities which the Constitution imposes upon Congress is the regulation of the succession to the office of president in certain contingencies. The framers of the Constitution themselves disposed of the problem in part by creating the post of vice-president and making that officer a first recourse in filling a vacancy in the presidential office. Realizing the need for designating more than one prospective successor, since vacancies might occur in both offices simultaneously, the convention at a late stage in its proceedings added as a seeming afterthought a clause authorizing Congress to make further provision by law on the subject. Although seven presidents and seven vice-presidents have died in office and one vice-president has resigned during the time the Constitution has been in operation, the situation envisaged by the framers has never actually arisen. Nevertheless, the power entrusted to Congress is important potentially. During nearly one-fourth of the time since 1789, a federal statute rather than a constitutional provision has governed the succession to the presidential office in an immediate sense.

Two fundamentally opposed theories have been advanced concerning the officer upon whom Congress should cause the powers and duties of the presidency to devolve. One is that the presiding officer of the House or the Senate should be designated, in order to insure that any person becoming acting president shall achieve that status through an elective process.

Canadian local-government institutions have been influenced by those of both Great Britain and the United States, yet they retain a distinctly Canadian character. Few residents of the United States have been acquainted with Canada's internal governmental problems, because there has been relatively little information available. Canada's top political leaders have been pre-occupied with making Canada a nation, one prepared to take its place in world affairs. But what of the governments within the Dominion? The Rowell-Sirois Commission hearings and its reports in 1939 brought to the attention of many people the problems of dominion-provincial relations. More recently, the Goldenberg report in British Columbia brought attention to certain provincial-local relationships. During the 1930's, many persons in the United States became interested in the Canadian provincial boards of municipal affairs because those boards seemed to offer a means for disciplining improvident municipalities and maintaining good fiscal standards. Viewed in their full perspective, however, these boards and the departments of municipal affairs in Canadian provinces illustrate vital developments in central-local relations. Within the past forty-five years, Canadians have moved rapidly in developing the vast natural resources of the country and in building cities, towns, and villages.