The advent of a new administration in the United States and the passage of seven years since the end of World War II make it appropriate to review the political situation which has developed in Europe during that period and to ask what choices now are open to the West in its relations with the Soviet Union.

The end of World War II found Europe torn between conflicting conceptions of international politics and of the goals that its members should seek. The democratic powers, led by the United States, viewed the world in traditional, Western, terms. The major problem, as they saw it, was one of working out a moral and legal order to which all powers could subscribe, and in which they would live. Quite independently of the environment, they assumed that one political order was both more practicable and more desirable than some other, and that their policies should be directed toward its attainment.

At many places and times, tribes have merged to form peoples; and peoples have grown into nations. Some nations founded empires; and empires have broken up again into fragments whose populations later attempted again to form larger units. In certain respects, this sequence appears to describe a general process found in much of history. This process shows a number of patterns which seem to recur, and which to a limited extent seem to be comparable among different regions, periods, and cultures.

When the United States stumbled into possession of the Philippine Islands in 1898, Americans had not operated a military government since Reconstruction, and the task of ruling a populous alien colony was an unprecedented one for them. Because of the insurrection waged by Filipino guerrillas after February 1899, martial law could give way to civil control but gradually. The long transition provoked a civil-military conflict which, because the chief antagonists were famous fathers of now famous sons, has recently acquired a new interest. But the rivals of 1900–1901 should be judged for their own deeds. How and why did Major General Arthur MacArthur and Commissioner William Howard Taft fall out?

Over a period of many months, both before and since the abdication of King Farouk, responsible heads of government in Egypt have been voicing a claim to the entire Nile Basin, although practical measures to convert the claim into control have been pointed chiefly toward that part of the Basin included in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

It is the fashion nowadays, especially in the United States, to assume that river basins are coherent, nature-given units of the earth's surface, without questioning their fitness for unified political administration or sovereignty. According to that fashion, even the extreme Egyptian claim seems cogent. The Nile Basin is a drainage unit and clearly appears so on the map (Fig. 1)

The history of international relations has lent itself to many uses. Its narrators have employed the tangled web of intention, maneuver, alliance, and war to vindicate or besmirch men's reputations, prove the guilt or innocence of nations in conflict, enrich traditions, furnish precepts for the present, and provide guides to the future. Their activity has gone on for a very long time and the product of their research has grown enormous. Presumably such a vast and varied output reflects a number of needs and interests. But is its perusal a useful way of gaining insight into the varied problems of international politics? More, as diplomatic history customarily is written, does it constitute an effective training ground for statesmen?

“The best thing about diplomatic life,” Joseph C. Grew once confided to his diary, “… is that one never knows when some event or development of prime importance is going to occur. We pursue the even tenor of our ways for weeks and months and then, often suddenly and unexpectedly, we find ourselves in the midst of a maelstrom of hectic activity, working day and night, rushing telegrams, drafting press communiqués and speeches, dashing from place to place, doing useful work.” Turbulent Era, the account of the forty years he spent as a career diplomat in the American Foreign Service, is convincing evidence that Joseph Grew was present on an extraordinary number of occasions when something of importance broke and that, above all, he was always doing useful work for the country he served so faithfully and so well.