Perhaps the only undeniable blessing to evolve from the recent troubles in Northern Ireland has been miniboom in the publishing industry. Seldom have so many, written so quickly, on a subject understood by so few—and turning, one assumes, a decent profit for their effort. Traditionally contemporary modern Ireland has attracted the occasional coffee-table volume or the nearly annual The Irish, potted “sociology.” Until quite recently, few scholars have ventured into contemporary affairs—those events after the revolutionary years of 1916–1921—and almost none of the tools of social science have been put to use on Irish society. Thus the latest commentators found a truly virgin field, bereft of valid experts, congenial to anecdote, fashionably violent, amusingly Irish and if not fit for the coffee table certainly attractive in the market-place. The result has been a twofold outpouring: first of those who would chronicle in print what had been for the British audience nightly fare on the television and second of those more committed or more daring who would interpret, analyze, explain and predict. The former, however ill-prepared, sought to write history, however superficially, while the latter sought to make it by rearranging the past to buttress their vision of the future. Neither the observers nor the participants have in print as yet produced a single definitive work nor in fact a very satisfactory plain tale of events—much less a revelation into the nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland. The attempts of this first wave to date, however, offer some insights into the Northern Ireland problem, into the nature of Irish and British scholarship and, perhaps, into the future that awaits the most distressful Six-counties.

The concept of the “generation gap,” like so many notions used to explain the present dislocations in society, has gained wide currency because it is a fundamentally soothing idea. To troubled adults it conveys the implication that the alienation between themselves and their children is a wholly natural phenomenon, inevitable and therefore healthy. It relieves the parent from the need to worry. For the rebellious young themselves the term has ideological uses, again through the implication that what they do is natural and normal, inevitable and desirable.

In an era of profound social change, when all aspects of national and international life are under scrutiny and review, it is vital that successes and failures in international scientific and educational relations be examined. The most dramatic success story in recent times may be the cooperative programs in agriculture that have led to the “green revolution.” The history of this remarkable effort can be measured against the criteria of the development of cooperative solutions to urgent “human species problems” and of building indigenous capacity through the training of leaders. If it is true that the core of international cultural relations is the purposeful exchange of knowledge and skills, especially knowledge and skills that can be used toward solving problems affecting the entire world, agricultural program can also be measured against this standard.

Announcement of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine by Soviet spokesmen in 1968 has been widely regarded in the West as a development marking a new epoch in the evolution of the world communist system. The Doctrine has been commonly viewed as a Soviet response to the exigencies of Great Power politics in circumstances of continuing loss of revolutionary dynamism or as a reaction to the threat to Soviet hegemony in its inner bloc posed by uncontained polycentrism, or both. Much attention has been devoted to the concept of “limited sovereignty,” with this concept being treated as the heart of the Doctrine and as evidence of a major new departure in the Soviet approach to world politics. This assessment, interestingly enough, is generally favored both by Western analysts and by anti-Soviet spokesmen within the world communist system.

To invoke the word “naturalism” is reminiscent of American philosophy of a past generation that under the interdict of Neo-Hegelianism sought a reconstitution of metaphysical attitudes, expressed in terms of Pragmatism and Critical Realism. But these naturalistic philosophies have, in a sense, come and gone, the philosophical mainstream being subsequently dominated by varieties of Positivism and continental European philosophies stemming from Existentialism and Phenomenology. It is curious, in a way, that, with one notable exception, most of these more contemporary philosophical movements presume some type of naturalistic base, at least to the extent that they reject the issues of conventional metaphysics and elect to deal, in various ways, with what they construe to be present actualities. The “notable exception” is clearly Logical Positivism that makes a radical separation between the scientific and philosophical enterprise.

With the dissolution of the Progressive Party in 1916, many of Theodore Roosevelt's followers parted company. Suddenly without a political home, they sought refuge in the two major parties that they had deserted four years before. Raymond Robins of Illinois and Edward P. Costigan of Colorado were key figures in that scattering of reformers as each attempted to lead Bull Moosers in a different direction. Searching for the party which could most effectively achieve the unfinished program which Roosevelt had launched in 1912, Costigan chose the Democratic party of Woodrow Wilson, while Robins argued that the Republican party best represented Progressive ideals. The purpose of this essay is to examine the manner in which these two leaders solved the Progressives' dilemma in 1916, and particularly the arguments they utilized in attempting to sway their former colleagues.