The subject of regional planning now stands high on the calendar of American social thinking. Miss Kimball, in compiling her admirable manual of information three years ago, was able to make a fair display of papers and documents on regional, rural, state, and national planning. Since that time the sheaf of materials has grown substantially in bulk and variety. This increase of interest in the topic was inevitable. As in the world of abstract ideas every attempt to cut through to the heart of a problem lands us in metaphysics, to use the penetrating observation of William James, so in the field of municipal development any effort to follow the filaments of city planning to their roots leads us beyond the immediate urban area into the large and indefinite region of which it is a part. Anyone who has for a moment got away from the political aspects of a specific city government and taken up some particular question, such as transportation, knows how quickly he is carried beyond the legal boundaries of his municipality into its regional, state, national, and even international, relations. If anyone, perchance, has doubts on the point, let him spend a few hours with the 1920 report of the New York-New Jersey Port and Harbor Development Commission. Of course to adepts this is all trite enough, but it is an indication of what must be the inexorable drift in the thinking of those who are concerned with anything more than the decorative aspects of municipal design.

The consulate is an old and a dignified office. Through various vicissitudes the consul has come down to us from the days when, with the dawn of new courage and enterprise, the closing of the Middle Ages saw the revival of international trade and travel in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Hence the future of that office must be of considerable interest from an historical point of view, to say nothing of the interest which all of us who expect to do any foreign traveling ought to feel in the fate of the traveler's best friend. All of this is doubly true in view of the fact that serious changes in the consulate are in point of fact impending, or even taking place before we have had time to notice them.

Almost everyone who has even a slight acquaintance with the history of international relations is aware of the way in which the consular office has already lost much of its old standing through the abolition of privileges of extraterritoriality in modern states. Originally, the consul was a judge in many cases between citizens of the state which he represented who were permanently, or even only temporarily, residing abroad. Today in all Western states he has come to exercise judicial powers only with respect to seamen on vessels flying the flag of his appointing state. The result has been a great diminution of his powers and prestige, a change so pronounced and of such long standing that few nowadays appreciate the great dignity and influence of the consular office in its earlier history.

One of the results of the federal form of government of the United States, under which suffrage and elections are made primarily the concern of the several states, has been the comparatively small part played in practical national politics by controversies relating to voters and voting. The great reform bills and representation of the people acts in England, as well as the conditions in that country under which the acts were adopted, have no close parallels in American political history. Still less closely does the history of this country in these matters resemble that of France. The experience of the Third Republic has been filled with controversy concerning the organization of the electoral power. The limits to this organization are indeed set by the stipulation of the constitution that “the Chamber of Deputies shall be elected by universal suffrage”; but within these limits considerable latitude for change is assured by the qualifying phrase, “in the conditions determined by electoral law.” Change has been frequent, and change has been attended by the controversy mentioned. Thus, there have been since 1875 no fewer than five alternate adoptions of scrutin uninominal and scrutin de liste; and since the separation of church and state was consummated in the beginning of the present century, the question of electoral reform has probably been the chief single issue of internal French politics.

This paper deals with the applicability of statistical principles and methods to research in political science. The subject is virgin and comprehensive. At the outset it will be necessary to delimit the treatment to be given it here, and to state some of the premises upon which this treatment will be based.

In the first place, the topic is unrelated to questions of public finance, or any of the bookkeeping aspects of government. I shall confine attention to more fundamental problems, distinctly psychological and sociological as well as political in character. These have to do with the nature and operation of forces that give rise to political activity and that determine its forms and its direction. A socio-political-psychology, quantitative in method, is the goal with respect to which orientation is sought.

In the second place, only data of a kind now available for research will be considered. Every statistician will agree with Professor Merriam's demand for the development and extension of governmental reporting, but my immediate concern is with undeveloped possibilities of utilizing existing materials.

In the third place, the desirability of a quantitative approach to political research problems is taken for granted. Yet the statistical method has serious limitations, not merely because it can never replace logic as a means of interpretation, but also because it is not universally available for scientific inquiry. The developments of recent years in the field of abnormal psychology, for example, have no quantitative method of discovery behind them. When subjective processes give rise to or accompany behavior, measurements of the latter may be possible.

Rose Macaulay, among others, has said that “women are always news.” When all else fails, murders, suicides, and divorce cases, journalists can still propound some such question as “can a woman drive a car as well as a man?” and they are sure of a hearing.

If it were not for the eternal interest of the public in women as women, women in parliaments would no longer be news. In these last few years there have been nearly a hundred sitting in the various parliaments of Europe, and now and then even the newspapers have shown signs of forgetting that they are there.

There is something odd about the geographical position of the countries in which these women members, deputies and senators, are to be found. They exist in a fringe around the north and east of Europe. France, Italy, Spain, and the other countries along the Mediterranean are out of it entirely. Upon closer analysis the situation grows even more mysterious. To find the group of women legislators of longest standing, one must go up beyond the Scandinavian countries, to the Finns, who live farther north than any other civilized people in the world. There are nearly twenty women in the Finnish parliament, and one of them has served her fifth three-year term.

Since the revolution of 1918 the Hungarian Chamber of Magnates, noted among upper chambers for its longevity, has been in a state of suspended animation. Unlike the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, which disappeared under the tidal wave of revolution at the outset of the Karolyist régime, it never was formally dissolved. Both houses of the Hungarian parliament, yielding to political realities, suspended their sessions and disbanded, many of the members of the upper chamber scurrying to regions under Allied occupation for protection against possible excesses of the revolution. Following the brief interlude of extra-constitutional Karolyist republicanism, under the legislative auspices of the Hungarian National Council, came the communist revolution which swept before it all remnants of the older constitutional structure. But not for long. On the collapse of the Hungarian Commune it became the onerous task of the Allied Governments to find, or to create, a constituent authority capable of assuming unreservedly the obligations of peace-making and domestic reconstruction. The First National Assembly, elected by decree of Stephen Friedrich, then the liaison between the Hungarian nationalists and the Great Powers in Paris, was the result. This single-chambered body, distinctly smaller than the old Chamber of Deputies because of the territorial reduction of Hungary, became, for the purposes of the Allied Governments, the sole repository of national power, and was acknowledged by them, as well as by the nation itself, to have constituent authority.

A new statute for the election of members of the House of Representatives was promulgated in Japan on May 5, 1925, and will be applicable in the next general election. It is Japan's fourth electoral law, the previous ones having been promulgated in 1889, 1900, and 1919, respectively. All three of the earlier laws based the suffrage upon a tax-paying qualification, the first requiring voters to pay fifteen yen in direct national taxes, the second reducing the required tax to a minimum of ten yen, the third decreasing it still further to three yen. The present law abolishes the tax-paying qualification and provides that all males twenty-five years of age and over, who are not otherwise disqualified, and who do not receive “public or private relief or help for a living, on account of poverty,” shall be entitled to exercise the suffrage. In addition to paupers and vagabonds, there continue to be excluded from the franchise active members of the army and navy, certain classes of civilian officials, women, and the heads of noble houses. Priests, religious teachers, primary school teachers, government contractors, and certain classes of students hitherto unenfranchised now gain the suffrage and may become candidates for election. Under the law of 1889 the franchise was exercisable by 450,000 men, and under that of 1900 by 983,000; the act of 1919 increased the electorate to 2,860,000; while the present law raises it to an estimated total of 12,000,000.