It is necessary from time to time to withdraw oneself from the tangle of events and to contemplate the main trends of contemporary history. What are the most significant international happenings of recent months, and what conclusions may be drawn from them?

It is a tribute to the immense power and responsibility of the United States in the world today that Governments outside the Communist orbit almost all marked time as they awaited the outcome of the recent American presidential election. The semi-paralysis of diplomacy has continued during the interregnum between General Eisenhower’s election and his official replacement of President Truman in the White House. The reason is not far to seek. The whole scale of the rearmament effort, which has been getting under way in Western Europe during the last year, depends more than anything else upon the policy of the new President and the appropriations of the 83rd Congress. The prospects of orderly control of the Middle East and Moslem North Africa—which constitute the Achilles heel of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation—depend upon the extent to which the new American Government can subordinate the sentimental anti-imperialism which is part of the stock-intrade of American politics to the solidarity of the alliance and long-range strategic requirements. In the Far East, no solution (if solution there be) can be found for the deadlock in Korea except through the leadership of the United States, which has shouldered the main responsibility for the war against the Communists and has suffered nine-tenths of the United Nations’ casualties.