To a free people, the very word “censorship” always has been distasteful. In its theory, it runs counter to all democratic principles; in practice, it can never be made popular, can never please anyone.

Everything the censor does is contrary to all that we have been taught to believe is right and proper. The Post Office Department, for example, has two proud mottoes: “The mail must go through,” and “The privacy of the mail must be protected at all hazards.” But censorship stops the mail, it invades the privacy of the mail, it disposes of the mail as may seem best. The same thing holds true in the publishing business. Censorship limits the lively competition and free enterprise of reporters. It relegates many a scoop to the waste basket. It wields a blue pencil—both theoretical and actual—on news stories, magazine articles, advertisements, and photographs. Censorship also enters the radio industry, where it may edit scripts and in some cases stop entire programs.

Yet even the most vociferous critics of the principle of censorship agree that in war-time some form and amount of censorship is a necessity. It then becomes not merely a curtailment of individual liberty, but a matter of national security. It is one of the many restrictions that must be imposed on people fighting for the right to throw off those restrictions when peace returns.

Since the establishment of the Nationalist régime in Canton in the year 1925 by the Kuomintang, the government of China has undergone only one major structural change. At the beginning, aside from the machinery which assured control of the government by the Kuomintang, the one organ of political power was the State Council, under which functioned the various departments of administration, civil and military, of law-making and of adjudication. The State Council was a going concern, and the various departments were subordinate organs. In October, 1929, there occurred a change. The Five Yuan were set up, each responsible to the Party machinery and each functioning independently. The State Council was retained, but, except for a brief interval, it no longer enjoyed substantial power.

The government of China, as it stood at the beginning of the war, was very much the government as set up in 1929, though necessarily with many important modifications. Supreme power rested with the Central Political Committee, which was a committee of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, charged with the direction and supervision of the government. It was not to be confused with the Central Executive Committee itself. While the Central Executive Committee met only at very long intervals, usually once or twice a year, and, being a large body of 300-odd persons, did little more than hear speeches and reports and pass resolutions, the Central Political Committee was a going concern and met every week to decide on important matters of state.

In 1835, Southerners were alarmed and indignant at the growing practice on the part of Northern Abolitionists of mailing incendiary Abolitionist literature into the Southern slaveholding states, and were casting about for some effective method of dealing with this menace to their “peculiar institution.” The memory of Nat Turner's insurrection was still fresh in many Southern minds, and the circulation of such literature as the Abolitionists were sending through the federal mails might, if the practice were not checked, result in an even more destructive uprising of the slaves. In Charleston, on July 29, the postoffice was forcibly broken into and a mass of literature found there was publicly burned. This sort of action was hardly, however, a satisfactory solution of the problem.

In August, 1787, while the Convention at Philadelphia was deliberating upon the commerce clause, the delegates witnessed a demonstration of John Fitch's steamboat, propelled uncertainly against the current of the Delaware. In the development of American federalism it may seem that technology—of which Fitch's steamboat will for the moment serve as a symbol—has counted for more than what the statesmen in Independence Hall worked out on paper for the distribution of power between state and nation. This is not to bespeak for poor John Fitch a niche beside the fifty-five founders; steam would have produced its centralizing effect upon economy and government even had there been no contribution by Fitch—who was, moreover, a cantankerous anti-Federalist in politics. I mention the coincidence merely to suggest that ingenious men invent and enterprising men initiate shifts in the nation's economy, and that the institutions of federalism have to adjust themselves to the resultant thrusts and resistances in the social medium. It is only at the end of the cycle that there comes a decision by the Supreme Court holding that the state had full power to act in the premises, or that the matter belonged exclusively to Congress, or that the command of the state was enforceable until Congress broke its silence.

Erie v. Tompkins evidences decentralizing trends in our federal system in two different ways—one fairly obvious and relatively orthodox; the other neither obvious nor orthodox, but probably the more significant. The first aspect may be touched upon very briefly and the ramifications of the second explored more fully.

The obvious side of Erie v. Tompkins lies in its rejection of a common law of the United States available for application by the federal courts in diversity cases. This conception was given expression by Story in Swift v. Tyson, and has been followed in many, if not most, of the succeeding cases building upon and expanding Story's doctrine.

A clause reserving to Congress the right to terminate by concurrent resolution (which has not for over a century and a quarter been submitted for presidential approval) powers delegated to the President or a department head appears in so many acts of the Seventy-seventh Congress that further consideration of its political and constitutional aspects seems appropriate. If its constitutionality is established, this clause enables a majority of both houses, when dissatisfied with executive conduct of any of these delegated powers, to terminate them. Leaders of the present administration, in Congress and in the executive branch, are aware of this possibility. Supporting the measure to extend the draft period, its author, Senator Elbert Thomas, said: “Broad authority is conferred by the measure, but that authority is expressly subject to revocation at any time by concurrent resolution of the Congress.”

The Report of the Commission on Revision of the New Jersey Constitution (Trenton: May, 1942, 59 pp.), as conditioned by the peculiarities of the state's governmental environment, is conventional in philosophy but unique in many particulars. It recommends a new state constitution, which is set forth in full—a proposed constitution relatively short, and showing some rigidity in legislative organization and procedure, but ample flexibility in its executive and judicial provisions.

The two outstanding characteristics of the proposed new constitution are its pronounced emphasis, first, upon positive restriction of the legislature to policy-making functions, and second, upon the identification of administrative responsibility through appropriate structural organization. Judicial reform has been the motivation for constitutional revision in New Jersey for over fifty years, and in recognition, the new document supplies a complete reorganization of the judicial system.

Between 1920 and 1940, the General Assembly of Indiana through resolution or act authorized no less than twenty-four special interim studies of legislative problems. In addition to these, the governor on eight different occasions set up commissions to study and report on matters of legislative concern. Diligent search has failed to disclose any evidence of activity on the part of a fourth of these commissions, but the others turned in reports averaging one hundred pages in length and at an average cost of $4,000.

In time of war, there is a tremendous growth in the number of federal employees. This is due both to the establishment of new war agencies and to an expansion in the activities of existing agencies whose work constitutes a part of the war effort. Coincident with the growth of the federal service in war-time is the contraction of the area from which new employees can be selected. Many persons otherwise eligible for government employment either volunteer or are drafted for military service, while others are attracted by the lure of higher salaries in industry. Thus the problem of securing and retaining the services of an adequate and efficient body of government employees becomes in time of war a far more serious one than in time of peace. It is the purpose of this article to describe the principal means which the federal government is using to obtain the additional civilian personnel needed for the present war effort.

This is a time when the nation expects every man to do his duty. The first duty of a learned profession is to determine how its members can be of greatest usefulness. This report is intended to be an analysis of possible and proper contributions which political scientists may make to the national effort. For the most part, it suggests ways and means to the individual; it makes few recommendations for action by the Association.

This report examines the opportunities for public service which are available to political scientists in the following fields of activity: (1) in public employment; (2) in undertaking tasks for the federal government; (3) in undertaking needed research; (4) in training persons for the public service; (5) in advancing public understanding of war-time and post-war problems; and (6) in strengthening democratic institutions and ways. Much of what is said on each of these subjects will be applicable to other social sciences and to colleges and universities as a whole.