Nine months ago the way ahead in Northern Ireland seemed clear. Perhaps for the first time in many years. Representatives of parries elected six months earlier to the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding between them a clear overall majority of the seats in that body, had agreed with the Irish Government and the United Kingdom Government at the Sunningdale Conference on a common program for the future government of the Province. And for its future relations with the rest of Ireland.

There was a large, liberal, miseducated audience waiting for Alistair Cooke. It wasn't just that he was a delightful English-bred type who's been in the public eye for many years; it wasn't just the fact that he'd broadcast his version of American history to a national TV audience for weeks before he polished it up and published it as Alistair Cooke's America. No, his book swept the country (that is, if the country is buyers of $15 books, all the book clubs in sight, and the critics) because for a hundred years a liberal audience had been miseducated to welcome Alistair Cooke's America, or at least to welcome its history of race relations, which is what I shall deal with here.

When I arrived at Earlham (a Quaker liberal arts college) from graduate study at Berkeley, a sincere young man from the student newspaper came knocking on my office door asking for a confessional account of my past political sins. That was a first for me. I tried to accommodate the young man as best I could, all the while feeling slightly uneasy. The story in the first edition of the year ran under the blazing headline, “Former Marxist Joins Political Science Department.”

In July, 1974, Spain finally stood at the threshold of the momentous political transition that many had hoped for and just as many had feared for at least thirty years. An attack of phlebitis placed the life of the eighty-one-year-old Generalissimo Francisco Franco in grave danger and forced him, for the first time, to relinquish the powers of chief of state, which were temporarily transferred to his chosen successor, Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon, who will presumably soon become king of Spain, in any event.

One of the most tiresome arguments in international affairs is the “realist” case against world federal government. It has been permitted to prevail for much too long.

For decades “political realists” have asserted that nationalism is too stong and stubborn a force for a world rule of law to be established. They have been all too persuasive—but have contributed thereby to their own self-fulfilling prophecies. “Realists” have typically voiced boredom and condescension toward federalists and have indulged in raw caricatures of the federalist case. The plausibility of such caricatures has been abetted by the fact that too many of the most visible (and audible!) federalists have been senior citizens whose fervent idioms suggest a dreamy one-worldism of an earlier era. It is time to renew and restate the case for world federal government.

It is not at all clear that Mr. Gastil's exercise should be treated with full seriousness. The question of “freedom” is, to be sure, at least the second most urgent issue of our time, ceding pride of place only to the increasing problematic of our very survival. But Mr. Gastil's painfully pretentious puffery (I said it was hard to take seriously) does nothing to advance and something to confuse our understanding of the problem.

Mr. Gastil's summary of the survey conducted by Freedom House commands assent on several points. Freedom is indeed a comparative word and exists in varying degrees. Freedom does not necessarily accompany, or result from, economic or organizational progress. And there is a close bond between civil and political liberties.

Mr. Gastil displays knowledge of a wide spectrum of political systems and writes in clear prose. Why, then, do his words leave this reader skeptical, with a sense of unreality, as though all that is written bears no relation to what he knows of Africa, the Mideast, Latin America, or Europe? I could not begin to take Gastil's essay seriously without first finding the key which explains these disquieting impressions.

Upon careful examination it is clear the responses essentially support the purposes of the “Survey of Freedom.” Both Quigley and Goulet appear to believe that political and civil rights are valuable social assets and that their suppression is seldom justified. Major disagreement comes from their belief that I should take more seriously other factors that relate to “freedom.”

This fall and winter promise to be among the most significant periods in the history of European diplomacy. The divided halves of Europe have locked horns in two sets of negotiations— mutual force reductions (MFR) and the conference on security and cooperation in Europe (CSCE). They may transform European and world politics in fundamental ways.

There is a crisis in public morality. Apparently the decline in our standard of behavior is so obvious that, despite our political and class and religious differences, we can agree upon the disorder if not the therapy. I therefore propose not to document our ills any further, but I do wish first to diagnose them and only then to suggest a line of significant treatment.