Recent literature, particularly in Germany and the Netherlands, has provided insights into some of the most perplexing imponderables of the Nazi annihilation of the Jews. These are, first, the development of consensus among the various German elites for the purposes of the Final Solution; second, an incremental kind of German decision making which led to the efficiently implemented mass annihilation of the Jews; and third, the passive mood toward the disasters befalling the Jews on the part of the entire universe of bystanders. (In the case of the Netherlands, this resulted, in spite of an unusually low degree of anti-Semitism, in an unusually high degree of Jewish victimization—in contrast to the so-called Danish reversal.) Fourth, because of the unimaginable predicament experienced by the victims and their “governments,” the Jewish Councils (such as the Amsterdam Joodsche Raad), they never had a chance to develop workable responses to such a catastrophe.

The publication of John Conway's book, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933–45 may be a suitable moment for a comprehensive look at the wider subject of Nazism and Christianity and the recent literature about it. Ever since Rolf Hochhuth's Deputy with its travesty of the tragedy of the Jews of Europe, the world has resounded with clamor about the silence of the Deputy of Christ at the time when the blood brothers of the founder of the faith were being slaughtered.

The French elections of June 1951 and the serious difficulties experienced by the victorious constitutional parties in the formation of a government call attention once more to the problems of a parliamentary system in a multiparty state, and underline the urgency of a redefinition of the roles of parties and government within a constitutional democracy. These developments also draw attention to the basic constitutional problems which affect the political stability of France, and thereby weaken the Western community. With an occasional glance at parallel Italian developments, this article will first analyze the new electoral law and the election returns before proceeding to a discussion of the constitutional issues that contribute to the deepening crisis of the Fourth Republic.

Mahan wrote protractedly about sea power, although certainly not more than his notable subject deserved, without using an unqualified “Sea Power” as the title for any of his works. His “Sea Power in Its Relation to the War of 1812,” for example, was published in two volumes totaling 860 pages. Held against this standard of thoroughness, any book entitled “Air Power” and running a modest 200 pages should perhaps be suspect at the outset. The purchaser should nevertheless be entitled to anticipate that such a book would in fact concentrate on discussing air power, that air power would be defined and placed in perspective as an instrument of policy, and that knowledgeability would be exhibited with respect to existing and projected national air forces. The reader might also expect a full awareness of the scientific and technological revolution now proceeding at so accelerated a pace that air power in some respects has to repeat its coming of age almost annually. Some expectation might be justified that the author would make his own contribution toward concepts and philosophy touching the use of air forces and the place of air power. If the author was English, as is Mr. Lee, the reader could also confidently expect some appreciation of future British air power, more especially as the United Kingdom has unequivocally replaced its ancient reliance on sea power with a new reliance on air power as the military fulcrum of its national strategy.

ARE there any connections between epistemological theories and JTXpolitical doctrines? This question is of more than theoretical interest. If such links exist, it follows that concrete political events are influenced, not only directly by political ideologies, but also, at least indirectly, by abstract philosophical beliefs.

We live in a world that cannot possibly satisfy our highest expectations. For these expectations must envision a universal society in which man would be forever secure from the exercise of arbitrary power; a truly reasonable world governed by harmonious action and not by conflicting interests; particularly, a world in which life would not seek to dominate life and the threat of violence would disappear. Machiavelli once described this world of the imagination as one where statecraft could be based solely upon considerations of “charity, integrity, and humanity, all uprightness, and all piety.” In point of fact, however, it would be a world in which statecraft would be altogether unnecessary. But not only is statecraft necessary; there are limitations imposed upon the possibilities of political action and these limitations must have an important, even a decisive, bearing upon the various strategies open to the political actor.

KTO KOVO?” asked Lenin. “Who governs?” echoes a contemporary American political scientist. The question is of perennial interest. The “who's” have the capacity to influence the behavior of others. They include political leaders, who customarily exercise power through public or governmental bodies, and non-political leaders, who may exercise power through the command of other values, such as wealth, income, expertise. Political leaders and non-political leaders together constitute the elite; they lead the masses, who, needless to say, greatly outnumber the elite.

These four publications appeared in the latter half of 1947 but all of them were written near the middle of the year. Three of them deal directly with the policy which the United States should adopt toward the Soviet Union. The concern of Mr. Armstrong at first seems to be limited to “the two main objectives of American foreign policy”: “to help Europe live and to strengthen the United Nations.” Subsequently, however, although Mr. Armstrong is nowhere explicit on this point, it appears that these are techniques, rather than objectives, for the first would avert the “planned social and economic disintegration” furthered by the Soviet Union, while the second would diminish the effectiveness of Moscow's policy of “indirect aggression.” It is, therefore, not unreasonable to include Mr. Armstrong among those offering answers to the question: Where do we go from here in seeking equilibrium and even an accord with the Kremlin?

This review of eight recently published works on Yugoslavia suggests that although information about the country is constantly increasing, the conceptual approach of social scientists continues to limit our understanding of its politics. Focusing on a variety of problems of interpretation that arise out of the concept of ideology in each work, the author offers alternative interpretations of Yugoslav politics and assesses the current state of our knowledge.

Self-Criticism has been a characteristic of NATO ever since it was established. We are perhaps too inclined to pull up our institutions by the roots from time to time to see how they are growing. But whether this is a good habit in the ordinary way or not, it is something that was virtually bound to happen in 1957, after the most critical twelve months that the Western nations had experienced since the Second World War. Nineteen fifty-six began with a widespread feeling of relief that the danger of a major war in Europe (the only kind of war that seemed possible) had greatly receded. Before this feeling of relief had time to wear off, there supervened a series of crises that shook NATO to its foundations. There was a virtual state of war in Algeria (itself a part of the NATO area), and many of France's best troops were withdrawn from Europe to fight it; there was an increasingly bitter dispute involving three members of NATO over the future of Cyprus; there was the Suez crisis, which also involved both NATO interests and troops from the NATO area; and there was the Hungarian revolution, which greatly damaged, if it did not destroy, the hesitantly re-emerging belief in Soviet good faith.

The problem of economic development was among the main preoccupations of the classical economists; and Karl Marx, Max Weber, and their followers continued to be interested in it. The Anglo-Saxon economists and their followers, however, during the century preceding the Second World War, all but forgot about economic development—perhaps because they took it for granted. The growth of most of the advanced economies was impressive enough to be taken for granted; as for the underdeveloped areas, next to nothing was known about their rates of growth, although economists (at least in the advanced countries) seem to have supposed that the magnitude of capital exports to these areas gave them a chance to develop even faster than, and ultimately to catch up with, the more highly developed Western economies. Only England's development received some attention and mild doubts were occasionally raised as to whether her rate of economic growth was as fast as it could and should have been. From the turn of the century onward, blue books and white papers appeared, uneasily comparing British with German and American industrial production, questioning the wisdom of exporting quite so much capital, stressing the need for more aggressive export drives—but next to nothing was done about all this. For one thing, the philosophy of laisser faire still ruled supreme; for another, business fluctuations obscured and rendered difficult a true assessment of the situation; for a third, Britain's continued political supremacy may have lulled concern over the deterioration of her relative economic position. The problem of development came to the forefront of economic discussion only with the Second World War, as a result of two important changes. In the West, political power shifted across the Atlantic; in the East, Russia's war record established her both as an important center of political attraction and as a shining example of the success of planned industrialization and development.