In the context of government, what do we mean by the phrase “a learned man”?* I take it we can mean a variety of things. On the one hand, we can have in mind the specialist, the expert, the man with an intensive and specialized background in a particular field of knowledge. On the other hand, we can have in mind the man with general wisdom, with that feeling for the past and the future which enriches a sense for the present, and with that appreciation for wider loyalties which deepens patriotism to one's country and finds bonds between it and Western culture and links with the universal aspirations of mankind.

There are schools of philosophy whose task it is to guard and transmit a definite doctrine, which generally gets its designation from the name of the thinker who was the first to elaborate it. It is in this sense that one speaks, say, of the Thomist, Scotist, Averroist schools. Certain schools receive their inspiration from the conceptions of a master but endeavor to renovate these conceptions; so we can speak of neo-Kantian sschools, neo-Hegelian currents, and neo-Thomist ideas.

Nine-score-and-one years ago, as Abraham Lincoln would put it, “our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The ideas of liberty and equality, expressed so eloquently in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are the very foundation stones of American citizenship.

One of the constant worries of the United States, since the role of a dominant world-power has been thrust on her, is the situation of Latin America. Relations with Canada require thought and preoccupation but they produce no deep concern. Canada and the United States understand each other and they form their policies in terms of friendly adjustment. Yet the same is not true when we consider the bloc of nations stretching to the south of the Rio Grande. They form two thirds of the geographic stretch of the western hemisphere, and they constitute a population equal to ours. The dependence on Latin America on the part of the United States in her capacity as an international power is evident. What is not evident is the way to make our friendship with our southern neighbors a more stable thing than the fragile arrangement which confronts us in the present.

Through 1918 Russia's new Bolshevik rulers, amateurs at the business of governing, were exposed to bureaucratic lessons much faster than they could assimilate them. Administrative techniques and organizational models essential for the direction of an empire had to be hurriedly invented or borrowed and rushed into operation; numerous special arrangements had to be devised for those areas where military crises or nationalist and separatist movements demanded immediate attention. During the process of simultaneously ruling and learning, the Moscow center sometimes received sharp lessons from the peripheries of the empire. Leading figures of the Russian Communist Party were often compelled by circumstances and by the hot tempers and loud voices of their colleagues out in the hustings to listen and learn and adapt themselves to the pressures of facts as others saw them. Passionate theoretical debates gave way to quarrels about the most expedient, most efficient method of getting the work accomplished; and the reciprocal adjustments resulting from this conflict between the center and the men working in the peripheral areas established patterns of thought and habits of action that were to become permanent features of the Soviet administrative system.

EdmundBurke enjoys the rather unusual distinction of having been both a revolutionary and a conservative at one and the same time. Before and after Burke, men have begun life as radical firebrands and ended it as reactionaries; but Burke combined the two attitudes, although in differing proportions, now one or the other predominating, almost throughout the course of his life. For example, Burke approved unreservedly of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, accepted the American Revolution of 1776, and called for a drastic change in the administration of British India; yet, he became the first thinker to propound a comprehensive statement of modern conservatism. He favored the Polish Reform of 1791, the freeing of Irish trade, the relief from religious disabilities of the Catholics, and the promotion of religious tolerance; yet, he lauded prescription and traditionalism. It is this ever-present dualism of thought in Burke which has so consistently disturbed scholars and historians of political theory and made it so difficult for them to place him in one camp or another.

The periods in American history when learned men and public leaders effectively join hands to face current problems are comparatively few and far between. The paucity and long intervals are not for want of the frequent, mutual exhortation of theorists and practitioners to cooperate and give aid that is sorely needed. The nature of the demands they lay upon each other are often beyond reach. Theorists would like full blueprints of the various elements in the process by which decisions have been made. Practitioners complain that learned men find it difficult to think and act within the limits prescribed by real situations. Moreover, the “academic approach to policy problems is apt to exhibit two tendencies: the first is a tendency toward abstraction and generalization; the second is a tendency to emphasize historical analogies.” Decision-makers grow impatient with the judicious and painstaking habits of the scholar, his quest for knowledge of both past and present, and the luxury of reserving judgment in which he indulges.

Not since the tenth century has Islam been confronted with a greater challenge of self-examination than in the first half of the twentieth century. During its early expansion Islam came into contact with Greek science and philosophy. Its failure to adapt itself to Greek science and philosophy, and to integrate Greek methods and teachings into its own, determined the character of subsequent Islamic thought and institutions. Between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries, Islamic society lapsed into scientific and cultural stagnation, accompanied by political corruption and social disorganization. The Muslims transmitted Greek science and philosophy to Europe without having been influenced by it to any great degree. Whereas Western Europe accepted the Greek heritage and tried to harmonize it with Christian teachings, the Muslim world remained essentially unaffected. Assuming a negative attitude, it finally rejected Greek thought and learning as heretical and, in self-defense, returned to literalism and orthodoxy. Ever since, Islam has been dominated by the theology of its medieval ulama or doctors of Islamic Law.

The question of tradition,* its nature as well as the binding power it might have, was formulated in a most precise and ideal manner at the beginning of the modern age. This occurred in the course of a remarkable and rather dramatic episode in the history of ideas in which several important characters of the time took part, Galileo, Descartes, and Pascal. Pascal did more than take part. At the age of twenty-four he attempted a critical estimate of the sum total of historical knowledge by clearly defining tradition with respect to the range and limits of its validity. This thesis can be found in a short dissertation bearing a title which at first glance looks rather strange: “Fragment of a Preface for a Tract on Empty Space” —the tract itself was never written.

JohnMarshall was modest when he said in Cohens v. Virginia that The Federalist was “a complete commentary” on the American Constitution. His own ventures in constitutional exegesis—highlighted by his interpretations of the commerce and contract clauses and his liberal construction of the implied powers clause—secure his rank as a constitutional commentator and seriously rival the authors of The Federalist. Marshall was, however, operating at a distinct advantage over the influential Hamilton, Madison and Jay, who wrote commentaries on a constitution which was yet to be rendered workable; they composed pamphlets intended to secure acceptance of the proposed government by reluctant states. Such commentaries are bound to have more limited value than decisions meant to accomodate the constitutional instrument to the practical problems of government. Marshall's essential contribution lay in the fact that his expositions of the Constitution, as distinguished from the pamphleteering attempts of The Federalist, imparted momentum to those trends which were eventually responsible for the adjustment of our political institutions to the changing tempo of an industrial technology.

The first quarter of the twentieth century saw the emergence within the British Empire of a commonwealth of autonomous dominions, each completely self governing in its internal affairs, each asserting its economic independence by assessing a tariff on British goods, and each aspiring towards a position of constitutional equality with the United Kingdom. Since 1945, a new commonwealth has emerged, including in its membership not only British nations beyond the seas but also nations of Asia, with cultures of their own and with a history reaching farther into the past than that of Britain, and to which are being added new communities in Africa. The appearance of this new commonwealth has raised the question of the relations between these non-European nations and the older members. It has also raised the question, once British control has been removed, how deeply the superimposed British political, legal, and social institutions have penetrated into non-British communities. The new commonwealth is thus an experiment in a unique, multi-national association of peoples, and upon the success of the experiment depends its future existence.

Anarchism is one of those concepts about which there generally is deep ignorance or profound misunderstanding.* “In the popular mind,” says Bertrand Russell, “an Anarchist is a person who throws bombs and commits other outrages, either because he is more or less insane, or because he uses the pretencse of extreme political opinions as a cloak for criminal proclivities.” Yet in the history of political thought, as well as in the history of social movements, anarchism has played a role which cannot be overlooked.

In the diverse humanity that makes up the United States of America many groups such as the farmers appear to be both separate and integrated, at once distinct and blended in the common image. Others have been more despised and mocked than farmers, and occasionally some have been equally praised. But none other has been the subject of as much idolatry and contempt as the hayseedy son of honest toil and sweat, the noble yokel, the independent and thoughtful clodhopper, the bucolic philosopher, the industrious sucker, the indispensable hick, and the God-fearing, hell-fire-and-brimstone breathing last stronghold of woolhatted democracy — the farmer. Let us look at his political, economic, and cultural significance.

Modern historians have not discarded the concept of class as a tool for analysis, but they are increasingly cautious in its use. Even G. D. H. Cole, in his recent Studies in Class Structure, has warned that when this concept is applied to advanced industrial countries, its elusiveness is enhanced as new techniques blur the accepted social divisions.

From the time of Metternich to that of Hitler and Stalin no other figure cast so large a shadow as Bismarck on the pages of European and world history. He began his career in 1862 as the hated minister of a faltering monarchy and of a state which for decades had accepted a secondary position in both Germany and Europe. And yet the political virtuosity of this Pomeranian Junker made him the decisive influence in German political life and the arbiter of European diplomacy for nearly a quarter of a century.

On the second of May in the year 1808, an event took place in Madrid which was to be of momentous consequence not only in the history of Spain but of revolutionary and Napoleonic France as well. As the last of the Spanish royalty departed from the capital for Bayonne and exile, outraged feelings gave way to an armed uprising against French rule. The revolt was speedily crushed by Murat's troops, but despite the grave restrictions imposed by his order of the day, Spain refused to be quieted. Juan Pérez Villamil, fiscal of the Supreme Council of War, issued a call to arms: “The country is in danger. Madrid is perishing, a victim of French perfidy. Spaniards, hasten to save her. May 2, 1808.” The response was immediate; irregular bands of troops sprang up, mob violence was visited upon those accused of being afrancesados (that is, pro-French), and many officials paid with their lives for their apathy in organizing the resistance. Everywhere was heard the cry of the patriots, “i Viva Fernando VII y mueran los franceses!” A few months later the regular Spanish armies were to administer to the troops of imperial France their first defeat. At last the principle of nationalism, so long a vital force in the success of the French revolution and Napoleon, had been turned against France.

The entire problem of German secret rearmament in the period following World War I is a broad and complex one. But the success of the German military in achieving rearmament in spite of the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles may in part be attributed to the course of politics under the Weimar Republic.

We are beginning to understand,” a Djakarta newspaper editor confided to me last spring, “that this business of democratic government means making allowances for one crisis after another. When we got our freedom from the Dutch we expected perfection, but what we got was a lot of muddling— still it's the best alternative.” An Indonesian University colleague with a record of distinguished leadership in a minor political party asserted: “I think from your point of view it must seem we are creating our own troubles, one on top of the other—but you must admit we try to solve them too.” And a Dutchman, an old Indonesia hand with many service years in estate enterprise repeated to me the judgment of many observers of the present Indonesian scene: “Things here are always hopeless, never serious.” Such views as these are common in the most knowledgeable quarters in the country, even among those whose frequent headshaking about current Indonesian foibles has been apt to cause resentment in Indonesia and alarm abroad.

The history of ancient Rome has had a perennial fascination for statesmen and publicists in their search for clues to an understanding of the problems of the modern world. In France, whether under Louis XIV, during the Reign of Terror, or under Napoleon, Rome was the school of statesmen. As Britain and Germany drifted deeper into their fatal rivalry before 1914, the ancient struggle of Rome and Carthage was repeatedly recalled, and each of the rivals identified itself with Rome, its opponent with Carthage. Today again, we seek to learn the wisdom, and to avoid the fatal decisions, of the statesmen of ancient Rome.

On january 20, 1925, the German Foreign Minister, Gustav Stresemann, handed* a memorandum to the British Ambassador, Lord D'Abernon, stating the willingness of Germany to conclude a pact guaranteeing the territorial status quo on the Rhine and her readiness to enter into a multilateral agreement for the purpose of securing peace between Germany and France. He repeated this proposal in the famous memorandum of February 9, 1925, presented to the French Government. True, his overture amounted to no more than a revival in a modified form of the Cuno offer of December, 1922, but it was put forward at a far more opportune moment when the Powers, having settled for the time being the thorny questsion of reparations, turned to tackling the pressing problem of security, realizing that without security Europe could not expect the return of confidence and peace.