What are the German people really like? A weird assortment of catchwords and formulas have been put forward, most of them as unscientific as Hitler's own racial doctrines: aggressors throughout the ages, perpetrators of a black record of war and aggression, submissive and obedient regiments, cultural and political romanticists, rebels against the established order, victims of a national inferiority complex, sentimentalists, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and so on. And yet unless the people of the democracies attain a realistic understanding of the Germans there will be a poor chance, after the war is finally won, of attaining a permanent solution of the German problem.

In the articles and books written about the German people in recent months and years, little or no attention has been given to one set of historical facts which is capable of providing a trustworthy and statistically balanced background: the record of popular election results from 1871 to 1933. In the long series of Reichstag elections in this period, the German people as a whole expressed their composite preferences concerning the dominant political issues of the times; and the very multiplicity of the political parties, each with more or less distinct character and policies, provides us with fairly extensive breakdowns of public opinion.

The chief reason for the lack of intelligibility in a course in the history of political thought is the absence of any standard by which the great writers in the field may justly be compared. The usual course in the history of political thought is thoroughly historical and scrupulously indifferent to philosophical analysis; at best, a semblance of comparative analysis is achieved by simply telling the student that different needs of different periods suggest different and equally valid theoretical constructions. The question of natural law, for example, is handled in something like the following fashion. The Aristotelian notion of natural law is no sooner inadequately in the mind of the student than it fails to survive the downfall of the Greek city states. The student is told that Aristotle's notion of natural law restricted his vision and blinded him to the inevitable growth of the empire of Philip, his own student. The Stoics, whose views were perfected by Cicero, held to a notion of natural law much more in keeping with the needs of a world civilization. The Church adopted the Stoic conception of natural law. Subsequently, after the writings of Aristotle had been discovered, St. Thomas Aquinas wedded natural law to the law of the Church. The Renaissance and Reformation liberated men's minds from the shackles of Mediaeval Scholasticism. The concept of natural law came gradually to be abandoned; it is already repudiated in the writings of William of Occam and Marsilius of Padua, and its disappearance is complete in Machiavelli. Accustomed to the tradition of 1066 and All That, the student gathers that this disappearance was “a good thing.” In the eighteenth century, there is a revival of natural law.

Delegation of Legislative Power: To the Federal Government. The rapidly growing practice of making state agencies which administer social security laws responsible for bringing them into and keeping them in conformity with the federal Social Security Act came under review by the Washington supreme court. Immediately following adoption of the Senior Citizens Grants Act as an initiative measure in November, 1940, the federal Social Security Board began withholding the matching funds on the ground that the flat exemption of specified items of an applicant's income and resources failed to comply with the requirements of the national act. After three and a half months, the state administrators yielded to the persuasion of the Social Security Board and issued rules which in effect nullified the federally objectionable features, and at the same time detailed how the items formerly exempted were to be considered. A divided court sustained both the rules and the law. The majority concluded that the Washington law was intended to be construed in harmony with the federal act, as that act is amended and interpreted by its administrators. Accordingly, they viewed and approved the delegation chiefly as one which authorized the local administrators to declare certain portions of the act inoperative if they found them in conflict with the federal law. The situation was declared to be one in which “the Legislature enacted a statute under which the executive determines some fact or status upon the existence of which the operation of the statute is to depend.” This theory, of course, makes the function more judicial than legislative, as was pointed out in the dissenting opinion. But the theory completely ignores the fact that, after suspending the proscribed sections, the state administrators wrote their own set of definitions and rules, which were then instituted as a budgetary system.

Both House and Senate have established separate legislative and appropriations committees and operate under rules designed to exclude legislation from money bills and to deny funds for purposes which Congress has not previously approved. The authorizations generally carry a maximum limitation which allows legislative committees to exercise continuing control and gives Congress some protection against its liberality, although in the two decades between the wars military authorizations ran considerably ahead of appropriations. The appropriations committees influence policy by determining which among authorized programs are to be supported and to what extent, as well as by incorporating “legislation” in Army supply bills, supposedly only when matters are urgent. They usually consult the military affairs and other committees affected, which may offer no criticism or may complain that their jurisdictions and the will of the house concerned have been disregarded. The objection is not merely one of formalities or competition for prestige, but has solid basis in the belief that legislative committees can give more thorough consideration to the implications of new policies than can appropriations committees. Within authorizations, authority over military appropriations is diffused, but control is pretty much by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the War Department. Its precedence over the Senate committee results, inter alia, from its initiation and more detailed examination of money measures and the latter's self-confinement largely to the rôle of an appellate agency. And the full committee, divided for purposes of expertise and expedition, usually reviews its recommendations only sketchily and hastily.

The dominant feature of German geopolitical doctrine is an endeavor to unite man and his race, time and space, geography and history, peace and war, in a new, organic, and scientific whole. Geopolitics, therefore, chooses at random and at its own convenience among political ideas and anthropological, historical, geographical, and legal data. In an attempt to incorporate them into the body of a brand-new “science of the state,” Geopolitik tries to apply its particular methods and basic principles to a wide sphere of “branch” sciences, such as psychology, medicine, and jurisprudence.

The all-pervasive influence of Haushofer's “portmanteau” science is most clearly evident in the new names of these synthetic, combined branch-disciplines, as coined by German scholars. The broad category of Geo-Wissenschafte now includes at least Geo-Psychologie, Geo-Medizin, and Geo-Jurisprudenz, as the result of the attempts thus far made at creating an encylopaedic totalitarian “science.”

A recent Congressional debate appears to have been one of the opening skirmishes on the question of whether the postwar commitments of the United States should be accepted by treaty or by unfettered executive discretion. On August 13, 1942, President Roosevelt transmitted to Congress a request for the passage of an enclosed draft joint resolution ostensibly “authorizing the execution of certain obligations under the treaties of 1903 and 1936 with Panama, and other commitments.” The President's message, after referring to the “thoroughly coöperative” attitude of the Panamanian Government in the present crisis and stating that “on March 5, 1941, the President of the Republic of Panama issued a manifesto making available for use by the United States certain defense sites in the territory of that Republic,” added that the time had come to make certain concessions long desired by the Republic of Panama. “Accordingly,” continued the message, “I deem it advisable that this Government convey to Panama the water and sewerage systems in the cities of Panama and Colon; that it relinquish its extensive real-estate holdings in the cities of Colon and Panama, so far as these holdings are not essential to the operation and protection of the Canal; and that it liquidate the credit of two and a half million dollars made available to the Republic of Panama by the Export-Import Bank for the construction of Panama's share of the Chorrera-Rio Hato Highway, a road essential to our defense requirements and constructed in accordance with standards made essential by these requirements.”

When the American form of government and our democratic way of life hang in the balance of armed conflict, the political scientist feels impelled more than ever to rally to the defense of these values. He Writes volumes to defend our system and to attack the systems of our enemies. He writes political philosophy and political ethics—just plain politics is forgotten.

The uninformed layman might expect from his title that the political scientist would be an expert in the analysis of political processes in his own community. He would be disappointed. The following comment made by Aristotle centuries ago applies with equal validity to the problem of political science today: “Must we not admit that the political science plainly does not stand on a similar footing to that of other sciences and faculties? I mean that while in all other cases those who impart the faculties and themselves exert them are identical (physicians and painters, for instance), matters of Statesmanship the Sophists profess to teach, but not one of them practices it, that being left to those actually engaged in it: and these might really very well be thought to do it by some singular knack and by mere practice rather than by any intellectual process; for they neither write nor speak on these matters (though it might do more to their credit than composing speeches for the courts or the assembly)….” Since the politician of today remains inarticulate when it comes to discussing his methods for publication, the responsibility of building a science of politics, if there is to be such a science, continues to rest with the political scientists.