From the point of view of technology, of travel, and transportation the world is a much smaller place than it used to be only thirty years ago. This process of physical shrinkage which has been going on for quite some time does not show any signs of slackening. The same is true of communication of ideas, dissemination of knowledge, and the exchange of persons and of works of art and literature.

The meaning and implications of the word colonialism and of the closely connected terms of empire and imperialism have undergone a profound transformation in the last decades. Until the end of the nineteenth century the word empire or imperialism was generally used in a laudatory and not a pejorative meaning. The Roman Empire had been the model for Western political thought for one thousand years. The Americans at the end of the eighteenth century proudly and hopefully spoke of their empire. The French revolutionaries proclaimed the imperial expansion of their leadership. Modern Western civilization was regarded as superior to other more stagnant civilizations, and to bring higher civilization to less developed countries was considered a praiseworthy enterprise, in spite of the fact that like so many human efforts this too was inextricably mingled with all kinds of corruption and greed. Empire and colonialism always implied dominion and power; and power, whether exercised by “native” or “alien” governments, has a potency for abuse as probably no other relationship has. Yet liberal alien governments—and liberalism means primarily restraint upon, and limitations of, governmental authority—will be more easily controlled by public opinion against abuse of power than illiberal “native” governments.

It is now thirty-two years since the death of Woodrow Wilson, one hundred years since his birth, and still the place in history of this Southerner who became president of Princeton University and later President of the United States remains somewhat uncertain. Wilson will rank among the great American presidents, but precisely where his reputation will come to rest is at present difficult to say. His public life has been the subject of intense scholarly investigation. College professors of history and political science have found his career fascinating (perhaps, one suspects, because he was the only college professor to reach the White House). But they have been unable to make up their minds about him. There is a passionate air in the historians' appraisals of Wilson, and more than a hint of assertion and argument, and beneath even the most calm and apparently measured accounts there is intellectual heat of a sort that betrays uncertainty about the stature of the man.

The rise of fascist, communist and totalitarian movements and the development of the two totalitarian regimes, Stalin's after 1929 and Hitler's after 1938, took place against a background of a more or less general, more or less dramatic breakdown of all traditional authorities. Nowhere was this breakdown the direct result of the regimes or movements themselves, but it seemed as though totalitarianism, in the form of regimes as well as of movements, was best fitted to take advantage of a general political and social atmosphere in which the validity of authority itself was radically doubted.

The first two decades of the twentieth century witnessed the flowering of a philosophy of international politics that was unambiguously simple, straightforward and capable of engendering widespread popular appeal. This philosophy looked in a spirit of buoyant optimism to democracy and national self-determination as the twin sources of international peace and order. The creation of popular regimes on the Anglo-American model everywhere throughout the world was heralded as a sure corrective to the harsh conflicts that for centuries had wracked international life. New nations brought into existence at the will of a self-conscious community of peoples would dissolve the rivalries and frictions that had always led to conflict among contiguous social groups. The faith of modern Western homo sapiens in man's potentialities for unending progress found its expression on the international scene in the assurance that a brave new world merely awaited the fulfillment of these goals.

According to Hegel, universal history is the realization of the Idea of Reason in a succession of National Spirits. These are manifested in the deeds of heroes, or world-historical individuals, such as Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon. However, the Idea of Reason does not work itself out in history in a manner which would seem reasonable on the surface. It is not actualized in this or that of its stages as a consequence of men consciously adopting it as their ideal and striving to translate it into reality through their mode of life and conduct. It is not, as it were, through the imitation of Reason that Reason is realized in history. How, then, does this take place?

Hegel's answer to this question is contained in his doctrine of the Cunning of Reason. Briefly, he holds that history fulfills its ulterior rational designs in an indirect and sly manner. It does so by calling into play the irrational element in human nature, the passions. So Hegel writes: “Two elements, therefore, enter into our investigation: first, the Idea, secondly, the complex of human passions; the one the warp, the other the woof of the vast tapestry of world history.” By “passion” he means those all-consuming emotions of the individual person which are self-regarding in nature. In discussing the question, he writes: “I mean here nothing more than human activity resulting from private interest, from special or, if you will, self-seeking designs—with this qualification: that the whole energy of will and character is devoted to the attainment of one aim and that other interests or possible aims, indeed everything else, is sacrificed to this aim.”

Few Presidents in American history established so complete and far-reaching a control over his party as did Woodrow Wilson during the first years of his tenure in the White House.* Indeed, before the end of his first term he had become almost the absolute master of his party, able to effect revolutionary changes in party policy without the previous knowledge and consent of Democratic leaders in Congress and the country. He attained this stature in part by his methods of public leadership—his bold representation of public opinion and his incomparable strategy in dealing with the legislative branch. He won this position of authority also through less obvious and more subtle means—a systematic use of the immense patronage at his command as an instrument by which to achieve effective and responsible party government. Confronted by no entrenched national party organization and no body of officeholders loyal to another man, he was able to build from the ground up and to weld the widely scattered and disparate Democratic forces into something approximating a national machine. Let us see how he used his power to mold the character of his party, and with what consequences.

In the eighteen-nineties there took place in Russia, at a time of rapid industrial advance under the “Witte System,” one of those great debates which seem to catch hold of the basic problems shaping the destiny of generations. In those years a group of narodnik writers led by Vasilii Vorontsov and Nikolai Daniel'son disputed with a young generation of Marxists the future of capitalism in Russia. By capitalism these writers understood the current process of industrialization, which had been started after the Crimean War and had reached such extraordinary proportions by the mid-nineties. In surveying and evaluating the effects of this unprecedented development these writers, both narodnik and Marxist, laid bare an intricate fabric of economic difficulties and hostile emotional responses, which has accompanied, if not altogether determined the course of industrialization in Russia. And not in Russia alone: this great debate had its counterparts in backward countries all over the world. Its echoes are still heard in the discussions of Point Four projects and United Nations publications on the industrialization of underdeveloped areas.

The unique relationship between religion the state, and society is perhaps the most fundamental—certainly it is the most distinctive—feature of American religious as well as American political life. It is not only central to any understanding of American institutions. It also constitutes the sharpest difference between American and European institutions, concepts, and traditions.

Between 1880 and 1914 no other thinker exerted a greater influence upon British thought and public policy than did T. H. Green. Bryce and Asquith have testified that Green's Liberal version of Idealism superseded Utilitarianism as the most prominent philosophical school in Great Britain. And what was more startling, he and his followers proceeded to bring to life the heavy abstractions of the Principles of Political Obligation. For Green converted Idealism, which in Germany had so often served as a rationale of conservatism, into a practical program for the left wing of the Liberal Party. From aristocratic Oxford which Matthew Arnold could still describe as “whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age,” there came a stream of serious young men dedicated to reform in politics, social work, and the civil service, men who would spend their lives in improving the school system, establishing settlement houses, reorganizing charity and the Poor Law, and originating adult education. Green's teaching had an extraordinary effect upon some of the best young men of this generation. A rich literature of memoir and autobiography attests to the great mark he left on the minds and lives of his generation.

In the turbulent world of William Faulkner's fiction there are two storm centers: the Civil War and World War I. Not that many of his stories or novels are written about these two conflicts. Only two of his longer fictions, Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and The Unvanquished (1938) have a Civil War setting and even these are not confined to the period of the War. Yet almost all of his Yoknapatawpha stories and novels have their roots in this war, or, more accurately, in the ambiguous moral realities which this war dramatizes in Faulkner's mind.

The international Communist movement is commonly described as a conspiracy and so, in part, it is. It is a conspiracy in the sense that the national Communist parties are members of a coordinated international political movement which attempts to undermine the present social and economic order and replace it with the Soviet brand of collectivism. It is also a conspiracy in the sense that Communist parties, unlike other national parties, would, if given power, deliberately place their countries under the domination of, or at least align them with the USSR. The Communist parties with their clandestine organization and their addiction to violence when they think they stand to gain by its use, simply cannot be put on a par with other political parties. All this is well known and needs no retelling.

The second funeral ceremony performed by Khrushchev during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was even more pregnant with far-reaching political implications than the first one organized by him as a Chairman of the Funeral Arrangements Committee after the death of Stalin. The three speakers on the first occasion have in the meantime been relegated, one to the ground and two to the background. Iconolatry has been replaced by Stalinoclasm. Certain crimes of the Stalinist era, defined as the period between 1934 and 1953, have been admitted. However fascinating the personal aspects of the drama, the wider characteristics of the stage on which it is taking place are no less important.

In poland, unlike the other satellites, Communist policy toward the Church in the past ten years has been largely cautious and at times even conciliatory. There were no wholesale persecutions, no spectacular trials like those of Mindszenty or Stepinac. That is not to say that the Communists were willing to tolerate the rival claims of the Church to shape the mind and soul of the population. They merely found it wiser to pursue their goal slowly. The progress toward that goal, involving among other things the signing of a bilateral agreement, provides some insights into the course and outcome of a seemingly mild Communist policy.

While our subject is the very broad one of “History and Diplomacy,” I thought I would narrow it somewhat and attempt merely to describe something of the aspect in which diplomatic history presents itself to a diplomatist who has turned late in life to the study and writing of history.* In doing so, I hope that I have not taken too great a liberty with the subject our hosts had in mind.

Charles I was charged in the indictment before the High Court of Justice, at the trial before his execution, with entertaining “a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will.” To this end he had “traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present parliament.” It is usual to scoff at this. How could a king commit treason? Indeed he could not. Yet if he had set out to make himself a tyrant this was a grave offense which, though unknown to English law courts, had often been accounted in political theory as deserving death. The issue of treason is therefore without importance: however bad in law, there was certainly no lesser charge on which to bring a king to execution. The important question concerns tyranny.

The irish have always been proud of their ability to assimilate their conquerors, who often, like the Burkes and Geraldines, became hibernis ipsis hiberniores. No doubt the charm of Ireland explains this phenomenon as well as the boast of John O'Leary that one had but to live in Ireland six years and he was Ireland's. But why should the immigrant who abandoned the old country and his son who never saw it become in many ways more Irish than the Irish themselves? What was there in the immigrant experience that transformed the indifferent peasant into a fierce and aggressive Irish nationalist? What was the character of this nationalism that shifted the balance of Irish political power, so that in 1885 the London Times could say with confidence that “the Irish Question is mainly an Irish-American question?”

Diplomacy has changed so greatly since the beginning of the twentieth century that the diplomatic historian is driven to wonder whether his subject has any relevance to the contemporary world.* Then and now—let us set them against each other. Then Europe was the center of diplomatic action; now the diplomat's mind must compass the globe. Then he need take account of a few powers, all with settled traditions of policy. Now he must try to estimate the direction of policy in states with no settled traditions, like Indonesia, while even in older states like Italy and Germany tradition is not a safe guide. Then the diplomat was, for the most part, concerned with narrowly political subjects; now he must study and report on many and diverse subjects. Then information was easy to come by; now, over much of the earth's surface, heroic efforts are made to conceal essential facts and figures. Then there was intimacy and confidence within the group concerned with diplomacy in any country; now discussion is carefully kept within the scope of the lowest security clearance in the room. Then diplomacy was a leisurely business—Bismarck buried in the country for months on end, Salisbury deep in chemical experiments at Hatfield House, Grey feeding his beloved ducks. Today incessant activity is the mark of the statesman. “I spent 350 of my 562 days as Secretary of State at international conferences,” boasts Governor Byrnes. Secretary Dulles' air mileage over the last three years surely exceeds that of any traveling salesman.

Interest in Slavic and mid-European studies,* so long neglected, is growing considerably in the United States. Unfortunately it concentrates mostly on modern history. In Slavic studies, too much time is often devoted to the history of Russia since the Revolution, and to the analysis of the new social and political order established in that country under the influence of non-Slavic social ideas which had originated in the West, and especially in Germany (K. Marx and Lasalle) in the nineteenth century. The earlier evolution of Russia, other Slav nations, and their mid-European neighbors, is still undeservedly neglected. It is a mistake. In the Middle Ages, the Slavic nations, the Hungarians, and the Rumanians played a prominent role in the civilizing of Europe. The memories of their glorious past helped the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbs, Bulgars, Magyars, Rumanians and also the small Albanian nation to survive the difficult period of oppression by foreign rulers and inspired their national leaders in their fight for independence and freedom.

The germans, usually thorough in their scholarship, have perhaps been nowhere more so than in the exploration of their own country's history. All the more surprising, therefore, is the comparative neglect which has been the fate of one of the most significant figures in all of modem German history: Prince Hardenberg. The title that he held for twelve years would alone be enough to suggest that he was a historical personage of some importance, for he was Chancellor of Prussia, the first man, and (except for two insignificant and ephemeral successors) the only man before Bismarck, to be so designated. (To be exact, Bismarck to begin with was Minister-President of Prussia, and became Chancellor of the Germany that he created.) But there is much more to Hardenberg than his title. His career culminated in those revolutionary decades when not France only but all Europe was at the crossroads, when, having been shaken loose to a greater or lesser degree from the accustomed routine of the ancien rigime, each country was faced with the necessity of either undertaking considerable repairs in the old structure, or venturing in some direction into uncharted political territory. Hardenberg was destined to play an important, in many respects a decisive part in determining Prussia's choice, a choice of which it is nothing more than sober fact to say that it has not ceased to affect European and world politics almost a century and a half later.