Nineteen thirty-eight marked the completion of the first year of successful operation of the new international sugar régime and the beginning of its second year. This régime constitutes a new effort at international administration and planning of an important industry. It is now possible to make a first examination of the practical working of the International Sugar Agreement of May 6, 1937, on which the present régime is based, and to compare its operation with that of preceding systems.

Since the passage of the act in 1878 which established the present government of the District of Columbia, official and semi-official bodies have several times suggested reorganization of that government. In the District of Columbia Appropriation Act of 1940, Congress authorized the House and Senate committees on the District to obtain secretarial assistance in examining previous surveys with a view to selecting recommendations that would “effect a more efficient and economical handling” of District affairs.

The British Conservative party recommenced its normal activities after the party truce of the World War years in fundamentally different circumstances. The electorate had been vastly expanded, and the Conservatives faced a formidable new opponent in the Labor party. There was danger that the mass following of the party might be lured away by this new opponent, and there was the necessity of gaining the allegiance of a large number of the new voters.

These tasks of holding the old adherents of the party and gaining new recruits were assigned in large measure to labor committees, widely organized as an integral part of the constituency organizations, and the Central Labor Committee which was set up as a subcommittee of the executive council of the National Unionist Association.

The collapse of the League of Nations as an instrument of collective security has called forth a series of politico-legal reactions, of which perhaps the most symptomatic of the crisis in the international order is the new neutrality policy of the small European states. This new policy was prompted by the collapse of the League of Nations sanctions against Italy. After withdrawal from the League had been seriously discussed in some of the small European states, and just before the lifting of the sanctions against Italy by the League, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland published a joint declaration, on July 1, 1936, containing in a veiled form a cancellation of the obligations under Article 16 of the Covenant of the League.

The labels that happen to become attached to things are of little consequence; the substance is what counts. Good government does not consist in getting any certain caption placed upon a municipal organization; it consists in the introduction into its daily functioning of practices and processes that guarantee responsiveness to public needs. Four main types of governmental structure have figured in the history of American cities: strong council, strong mayor, commission, and council-manager. Each of these has several features peculiar to itself, yet there are a number of principles and provisions, which, if not common to all four types, are at least not incompatible with any of them and are capable, as experience has shown, of being adopted or employed in connection with all.

During the depression years, many American municipalities were unable to engage in a program of local public works, with the aid of loan funds, because of legal limitations upon their borrowing power. In a number of states, there are constitutional limits to the incurring of local non-self-supporting indebtedness. For example, Pennsylvania limits the debt “of any county, city, borough, township, school district, or other municipality or incorporated district” to seven per cent of the assessed value of the taxable property therein. But the city of Philadelphia is permitted to incur non-self-supporting indebtedness up to ten per cent of the assessed value of the taxable property in the city.