The idea of a European political and economic union is more popular and is being taken more seriously in the United States than in Europe. The American attitude has been well expressed in the “Declaration of Policy” of “The Foreign Assistance Act of 1948” by which Congress enacted the European Recovery Program. One section of that act reads:

Any attempt at the formulation or critical review of American policies in Europe is conditioned by our historical conceptions. Whether we try to define American policy with regard to Germany, the economic recovery of Europe, or the protection of western Europe against further Russian inroads, we are consciously or unconsciously influenced by what we consider to be the “normal” organization of Europe, and are thereby led to direct our political actions as much as possible toward the restoration of the traditional order. There exists, on the other hand, a general awareness of radical changes in world politics and especially European affairs, and our practical political experiences demonstrate that we are constantly driven to adopt unprecedented measures which run counter to what we still envisage as the historical pattern of Europe.

THE recent resignations from posts of high civil authority or ceremonial rank of former military officers will no doubt allay somewhat the suspicions current a year or more ago that the military were “moving in” where they did not belong. Although the original appointment to civil posts of such men as Generals George C. Marshall and Walter B. Smith was hardly due to design on the part of the armed services, being quite easily and plausibly explained on other and quite innocuous grounds, the military departments unquestionably do have a greater influence upon high policy decisions than was true before the recent war. It is therefore time to express concern not so much that that military will move in where they do not belong, but rather that in the process of moving in where in part, at least, they do belong, their advice will reflect their imperfections not as diplomatists but as soldiers.

The concept of “people's democracy” has posed a real ideological dilemma for the U.S.S.R. Prior to the spring of 1948 Soviet theory was confronted with the fact that—partly because of Soviet policy itself—eastern Europe was not developing toward socialism by exactly the same pattern of violent revolutionary change which the U.S.S.R. had experienced, but in a manner more closely approximating gradual “reform.” To a very considerable extent it was in the interest of the Soviet Union to emphasize the differences between its own development and that of the “new democracies” in order to quiet national and non-Communist fears in those countries. At the same time, the U.S.S.R. apparently felt obliged to establish its own position of ideological “leadership” in eastern Europe and, simultaneously, to fit the concept of “people's democracy” into the body of orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine.

Wishes have been the fathers to many thoughts, but wishes alone have never sired an effective international organization. It is only when the desirable and the possible have been brought into some sort of relation with each other that plans for international organization have ever had any chance of succeeding. This statement is of course a truism; anything which succeeds must have been possible. Can one, however, make any statements about the limits of what is possible without waiting for the historical record to complete itself? In the field of international organization failure to undertake this task has resulted in many cruel disappointments, and unfounded optimism has given way to uninformed cynicism. It is therefore of some interest to consider some of the ways in which the stubborn facts of international life condition the range of choice within which men of good will may hope to act successfully.

IT is not the least of the sins of the current East-West conflict that its hypnotic influence has seduced our attention away from a number of other problems some of which are at least as likely to determine the future of mankind as that conflict itself. Among these problems one which stands out as of indisputably central importance is the future development of the many millions of peoples who remain in a colonial status or have recently emerged from it into a precarious independence. To these peoples there must be assimilated others—notably the Chinese—who, although they have never come under explicit colonial rule, are in the same general position of emerging suddenly from an ancient world into the complex modernities which are essentially the creation of Western Europe and its descendants overseas. From another aspect these are all peoples who in modern times have been the object of the policies and activities of more dynamic states and peoples and who are now vigorously asserting the right to become masters of their own destiny. At the least they demand the right to be let alone to shape their own societies according to their own conceptions of the good life, with such non-imperialistic aid as they may be able to secure; and, beyond this, they seek to play an active role in the shaping of the world at large on equal terms with the peoples to whom they have been subject and inferior. The internal cohesion, structure, and advancement of these peoples, the attitudes which they come to develop, the power which they may achieve, and the goals toward which they direct this power, are matters which may well prove to be the most crucial issues of future decades and even centuries.

Strategic Intelligence can be read variously as: 1) a general introduction to intelligence work which, say, the director of almost any section of Central Intelligence might give a new recruit to read on his first day at the office; 2) a memorandum from an Old Hand at intelligence work who has thought it all over—like the bird in Peter and the Wolf, from a safe distance—and has a thing or two to tell those of his colleagues who have stayed on in Washington; and 3) an attempt by that same Old Hand to make sense—inter alia for himself—out of a greatly expanded United States government activity in which, as all who know it can testify, sense does not leap to the eye. Because the book is in part each of these three things, it is not perfectly satisfactory as any one of them. But it is evidently not offered as a learned treatise on any or all of them: indeed, the gap in the existing literature in the field is so great that one can hardly be surprised at Mr. Kent's failure to define his task with precision. The great merit of his book is that it provides a body of descriptive material which will enable serious public discussion to begin on the relation of intelligence to policy in a democratic system. Since it is American policy on which the future of the free world seems to depend, it is high time for the public debate to commence.

If the passing of the European age is not to mean the passing of the democratic way of life, democrats must be better equipped than they now are to carry on the struggle for the minds and hearts of men who dwell beyond the confines of the Western, democratic world. Indeed, if democracy is to maintain itself against the forces which threaten it from within, democrats must reexamine the bases of their belief. The struggles to make the world safe for democracy and to make democracy safe in its traditional Western homelands are indeed so intertwined that the task is as urgent on the one front as it is on the other.