There Can be no such thing as an innocent reading of the Tale of Peter Rabbit. As that most percipient analyst of the later manuscripts, Enid Blyton, puts it: “We must pose this work the question of the specificity of its object, its relation to its object. The only reading of Peter Rabbit which speaks to us through the congealed layers of the past-becoming-present is a symptomatic reading—a reading in which we listen attentively to Beatrix Potter's silences”.

Sociologists, like economists, have never been very good at verifying the ‘models of man’ that they use. Both ‘economic man’ and the sociologists' ‘oversocialised concept’ of man rarely received much critical attention from their proponents, and now ‘rational man’ seems to have received as little practical investigation as his predecessors. He is therefore, I suspect, likely to follow them into disrepute. Indeed, he is already under some attack. Some investigators have claimed that many, extremely important, decisions are made on moral not rational grounds. Even in such a dramatic and serious matter as kidney transplantation, when the kidney is to be taken from a living donor and given to a close relative, most would-be donors “make an instantaneous split-second choice without deliberation”. They do not weigh up the pros and cons and decide accordingly but rather follow the moral imperative to donate.

Le livre que j'ai intitulé République impériale, les États-Unis dans le monde 1945–1972 appartient au genre de l'histoire diplomatique. Pour la première fois, au lieu de spéculer sur la connaissance historique, j'en affrontais, à titre personnel, les difficultés. Inévitablement, je me suis, à chaque instant, interrogé sur la nature des démarches auxquelles m'incitait ou m'obligeait mon projet: rendre intelligible la conduite, durant un quart de siècle, de l'État dominant du système interétatique.

In this century military intervention in the political arena on the part of the Greek armed forces has been, either directly or indirectly, the rule and not the exception (i). The forms of and the motivations for this political activism have varied greatly, but in spite of the often decisive effects of their intervention in political affairs the Greek military and the reasons for their intervention have not been studied in any serious or systematic manner.

An uneasy relationship between the army and the society within which it operates is a situation characteristic of most contemporary, relatively developed countries. The major tensions crystallize around three foci: first, the incompatibility between the continuous decline in the centrality and salience of the national security issue and the increased allocation of human andmaterial resources to the military institutions. Second, the societal dilemma between an ideology which advocates the total segregation of the army from the other institutional spheres and the tendencies towards overt or latent role expansion of the military system. Third, the decline of military values and roles as a result of the impact of competing values. As a result of these tensions, the balanced exchange between the social system and the military sub-system tends to be disturbed. The military is often geared to maintaining a level of national security which requires a commitment of resources to this function exceeding the actual input of such resources. Consequently, the performance of the military is often impaired, and the government comes under pressure to increase military spending. Our paper deals with two democratic political systems which, to a considerable extent, avoided this kind of tension between the society at large and its military institutions. The comparison will be between Israel and Switzerland, with the emphasis on the former. The comparison will be made in reference to specific points relevant to the problems under study and will not be a general comparison of the two systems.