IT IS a painful paradox that the defeats suffered by the democratic myth abroad have coincided with the rise of a critical realism toward democratic institutions at home. No trend is more marked in contemporary American political science than that of comprehending the polity in terms of “pressure groups” competing for control. Such atomistic segregation inevitably minimizes the essential function of a firmly established ideological framework. Without it, the state is limp; allegiance is reduced to considerations of material satisfaction, changing with demand and supply; individual freedom lacks a dedication to superindividual objectives.

IN Declaration of Independence the Fathers of this Republic declared that there are certain self-evident truths and that man is endowed by his Creator with inalienable rights. The idea of natural law and its consequent natural rights was stoutly maintained and to this natural law American Revolutionists appealed against the injustices that a written law would not redress. Above the state and its constitution and written enactments was a higher law of divine origin and purpose. That law was universal, unalterable, and immutable. It was as fixed and certain as die mathematical propositions of the multiplication table or the simple arithmetical statement that two plus two equals four.

As professor Friedrich has pointed out in his Foreign Policy in the Making (Norton, New York, 1938) an effective foreign policy presupposes national unity and continuity. President Wilson tasted the bitterness of defeat over his League of Nations because he was an innovator and because he found it impossible to rally the nation behind his plan for American participation in an international peace program. At the present moment President Roosevelt is confronted both inside and outside his party by aggressive dissenters from his foreign policy. Persons and groups posing as the true defenders of the American democratic tradition have demanded the Ludlow referendum on war. They have presented isolationism, neutrality and economic nationalism as the principles of an authentic democratic way of life and have depicted international collaboration against aggressors as autocratic and dictatorial in tendency. The traditional American foreign policy of a “broad neutrality” says former President Hoover in Liberty, April 15, 1939, is being discarded by the present administration for a “vague use of force in association with European democracies.” Others say that President Roosevelt is leading the United States into war in order to assure himself a third term and to perpetuate New Deal “dictatorship.”

A FEW YEARS AGO, hardly an important or good book about the human problems of the land was appearing. Now, to judge by the books and articles, we see that a new and very intelligent interest has been awakened. Publications are devoted to homestead and subsistence projects, such as Ralph Borsodi's and Monsignor Ligutti's, to the great and lasting agrarianism of the South, to an outright decentralization, to cooperatives as affecting rural and suburban life, and especially to the effective and democratic cooperatives of Nova Scotia.

Political parties have been subjected to more vigorous criticism than any other institution of modern democracy. It is charged that their divisions split a country artificially. It is further contended that the line-up into the two camps of government and opposition makes it impossible for a country to avail itself of all its political talent, since those belonging to the opposition party are, temporarily at least, unavailable for constructive work, and are instead making every effort to obstruct the government in power. In the United States the point has frequently been made that the two major parties are no longer justified because neither of them contains anything which it could consider characteristic of itself. “The party term Republican isn't definitive any more. It isn't even descriptive. No more so is the party term Democrat. They are labels on empty bottles, signs on untenanted houses, cloaks that cover but do not conceal the skeletons beneath them.” More recently a similar charge has been made by Dr. Mortimer Adler, a writer who brilliantly combines his analysis of the present with a knowledge of the past. He directs attention to the fact that parties, instead of responding to issues, tend to create them. According to Dr. Adler, parties would be justified if they served only the purpose for which they have been created and then dissolved; of course, in reality, they perpetuate their existence. On somewhat similar lines the famous biographer of the modern party organization, Ostrogorski, proceeded from theoretical criticism to practical suggestions. His plan was to replace existing parties by “leagues,” which were to respond to one issue only, and be dissolved as soon as that issue should be settled.

Munich marks the end of an epoch, a “turning point in history,” as Arnold J. Toynbee recently states in a most suggestive article. In fact, these decisive events were foreshadowed long before September 1938, by actions almost necessarily leading the road to Munich. If one can speak of the end of a period, one might better say: Hitler's march into the Rhineland, March 7, 1936, was the real water-shed between two political continents. Indeed what had been said about the World War, that it merely precipitated a development of political and social forces which were moulding the twentieth century, could be repeated of this greatest diplomatic upset of our time too. It had its roots in the history of post-War Europe, and it may be that even the more we win distance from this “water-shed of Munich” the clearer it will become that the currents of history are running in the same old beds and in the same directions as before September, 1938.