In one of Hans Andersen's fairy-tales, the emperor was exhibiting himself in splendid new raiment. But it was a hoax: the swindling tailors had provided no clothes at all; they had succeeded by black magic in imposing a belief that whoever should fail to see and adore the imperial robes was thereby betraying his own stupidity and unworthiness. All, all were taken in, by their fear and ambition, until a little child, ignoring the beauty of holiness, the sacredness of majesty, the inviolability of sovereignty, blurted out the simple truth—”the emperor is entirely without robes.” So I invite you to look with fearless candor at sundry sacred cows. They may be nothing but cunning contraptions of lath and plaster and camouflage paint. Let us candidly and naively say what we see.

As we look back 45 years to the origin of our Association, there are striking changes to be observed. The atom, then regarded as the ultimate indissoluble unit, has turned out to be complex like a solar system; its fission, whether for useful power or for the destruction of us all, has become a defiant challenge to our generation, the $64 question: Has our inventiveness in engines of destruction perilously outdistanced our power of moral growth?

Our kind of scientist observes that in our parlous political position new pathological factors are coming to light, symptoms that call for clear identification, conditions that require treatment if one is to hope for amelioration of health, peradventure for cure. We see about us not only blood, sweat, and tears—they might well inspire us to unwonted effort and more effective toil—but also corruption, gangrene.

In the decline of his life, a disappointed man might well ask himself what destiny would have held in store for him if at some crucial juncture of his maturity he had accepted the earnest advice of a solicitous friend or even of a keen-sighted foe. Today liberalism is confronted with a similar question. It is on the defensive in all parts of the Western world except in the United States. Even there its position is deceptive. Perhaps it survives tenuously under the artificial protective canvas of postwar inflation. Today one can hardly question this threatened eclipse of liberalism. Because of this foreboding, disturbing questions haunt the liberal. What deficiency in liberalism is leading to the abandonment of its tenets throughout Europe? Was there counsel offered and ignored in the past which might have retarded the infirmities of age?

The answer to the first question has long been apparent. Yet in practice contemporary liberalism, both of the progressive and nineteenth-century varieties, has never assimilated its essential meaning. Following the French Revolution and the English Reform Act, liberalism began its long history of divorcing theory from practice. In the splendor of Victorian industrial success, this separation was not driven into the consciousness either of the intellectual leaders or of the people. But with the tension, domestic and international, of the eighties, liberals themselves, like T. H. Green and then Hobhouse, undertook the task of correcting some of the glaring discrepancies between the doctrine and the reality. In the light of the basically abstract character of liberalism, these collectivist renovations now appear like amateurish tinkering with a vastly complex apparatus.

Liberal doctrine had indeed long been suffering from a negative attitude toward the state. But this was simply a diagnostic symptom of an even deeper defect: liberalism's unconscionable indifference to the material conditions of society, and its ensuing failure to put its theories to the test of the social reality.

Somewhat more than a year has passed since James Forrestal took the oath of office as first Secretary of Defense on September 17, 1947. While it is still too early to pass final judgment on the effectiveness of the National Security Organization, sufficient time has elapsed to take some measure of the vast scope of problems it faces, and of the soundness of the foundations upon which it rests.

The National Security Act of 1947, under which the new organization was created, was one of the most thoroughly studied pieces of legislation to come out of the war. In that act, Congress indicated its purpose as being “to provide a comprehensive program of the future security of the United States.” The act did not merge the Army and Navy into a single Department of Defense as many had hoped, but it did provide administrative machinery for establishing integrated policies and procedures for those agencies of the federal government primarily concerned with the national security.

The most important single fact about the National Security Act was that it did much more than merely reorganize the Armed Forces. Indeed this was the essential difference between the two reorganization plans sponsored during 1945–47 by the Army and the Navy. The Army's plan, drafted by Lt. General J. Lawton Collins and his staff, and frequently referred to as the “Collins Plan,” proposed a single “Department of the Armed Forces” with a Secretary at its head. The Navy's proposal went much farther. A brief description of the two plans may not be amiss, since they explain some of the problems that the National Security Organization has encountered during its first year of operation.

Rural local government received considerable attention during 1947 at the hands of state legislatures and the general public. The legislative sessions in many states were the first regular meetings since the end of the war, and therefore afforded the earliest opportunity to deal at length with various postwar problems and with certain problems of a peacetime nature on which action had been deferred during the war period. Perhaps the most significant phase of the year's developments was the conferring upon counties and townships, or special districts serving unincorporated areas, of numerous powers of a regulatory or service nature traditionally possessed only by municipalities. Another subject which received major attention was that of finding new and increased revenues to finance expanded programs of local services at rising price levels. Widespread interest was also displayed in such matters as areal readjustments, the modernization of local-government structure in the interest of efficiency and economy, and intergovernmental coöperation in the performance of local functions. In reviewing the events of the year, a topical arrangement similar to that used in previous summaries will be followed.

I. Areas

New Areas. State legislation authorizing the establishment of special-purpose districts was more extensive in 1947 than for several years past. Problems of water supply, sewerage, and refuse disposal frequently overlap political boundaries and sometimes involve suburban and rural areas as well as incorporated communities. Several states authorized the creation of special districts to deal with these and related problems. In some instances the districts are permitted to include only unincorporated territory, while in others they may embrace two or more municipalities or both incorporated and unincorporated areas. Nebraska and South Dakota authorized the organization of sanitary districts to provide sewage-disposal facilities in areas outside municipalities. Boards of county commissioners in Utah were empowered to establish improvement districts to provide water supply and sewerage for unincorporated areas. Special districts for supplying water, sewerage, or both, were authorized in Idaho. A Nevada law permits the establishment of districts for supplying water, sewerage, and garbage disposal, singly or in any combination.

The announcement in October, 1946, that in future a single Minister of Defense will sit in the British cabinet, and that the ministers of the three armed services will no longer be of cabinet rank, marks the culmination of a long and important trend in Britain's governmental organization. It is also of interest as the present British answer to advocates of a merger of the Navy, Army, and Air Force. To see the full meaning of this step, it is necessary to refer to two closely related problems of long standing: the question of the size of the cabinet and that of what is broadly known as imperial defense.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British cabinet, originally ten or eleven in number, increased to about fourteen or fifteen in the 1870's and 1880's. By the end of the century, however, increase of governmental services and multiplication of departments raised the normal size of cabinets to nineteen or twenty, and after the first World War to twenty or even twenty-two. Since the cabinet as such functions as a committee, it has been frequently pointed out that the present size is too large for prompt and decisive deliberation; and the experience of two great wars has shown without question that large-scale planning and the coördination of the innumerable interlocking aspects of a national war effort require a much smaller and more cohesive group. The existence around the premier of an inner circle of three or four ministers, among whom many of the most important decisions are made, is as old as cabinet government, but cannot be satisfactory for modern needs.

One wonders what the ghosts of Talleyrand and Franklin would say were they to visit the diplomatic conferences of today. Where is the suave approach, the graceful phrase concealing bloody warnings dropped by a king to the music of a minuet or passed by an ambassador to a minister of state over the after-dinner port? How surprised they would be at the blunt Bevin with his frequently unconcealed ill humor, at Molotov, rude and blustering, at Byrnes publicly changing his course in midstream, at Marshall announcing state policy in speeches rather than to plenipotentiaries or through official documents.

How surprised Talleyrand and Franklin would be to think of international relations carried on pursuant to slogans such as “open covenants openly arrived at.” How their shrewd eyes would have twinkled at the credulity of people who believed that they had democratized foreign affairs through such a slogan. The old school diplomats would scarely have confused headlines which report in large black type the speeches of the diplomats, or the political gossip columns which purport to repeat the whispered asides of statesmen, with covenants democratically negotiated.

The fact is that although we have gained publicity for foreign affairs, and that in itself is important, we have not democratized foreign affairs. They are still the business of technicians. They remain the preserve of foreign offices.

Dartmouth's new required course for seniors, called “Great Issues,” is avowedly an exercise in training for more effective citizenship. Its twofold purpose is to arouse in students a greater sense of public-mindedness and to make them more competent in the use and evaluation of the common sources of public information. Thus the Great Issues course, dealing with college students at the moment of their greatest undergraduate maturity, is pointed toward the problems of citizenship which beset a person in his adult years, just as it is also pointed toward the problems of adult education. It might, therefore, be described as an attempt to facilitate the transition from the methods of undergraduate instruction to the methods which adult citizens have to rely upon in securing the information necessary for making well-informed decisions.

The principal textbook in the course is the daily and Sunday editions of either the New York Times or the New York Herald Tribune, according to the students choice. Other reading assignments are such official or semi-official publications as the Acheson-Lilienthal report, the Supreme Court decision and minority opinion in Everson v. The Board of Education of the Township of Ewing, and To Secure These Rights. Students are required also to read in entirety designated numbers of such magazines as the Atlantic, Harper's, Saturday Review of Literature, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Nation, and Foreign Affairs, as well as a few particularly apposite current books.

The model session of an organ of the United Nations, whether it be the Security Council or the General Assembly, is probably the most dramatic method available today for teaching American students the practical problems of postwar international relations. Dormant during the war, model councils and assemblies have been reactivated and are now playing an important rôle in the international relations programs of many colleges and universities. Typical of the model international organizations are the Model General Assembly of the United Nations, sponsored by the American Association for the United Nations, and the Model Security Council of the United Nations, sponsored jointly by the colleges and universities of central New York State. Between forty and forty-five institutions in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey participate in the model assembly, while eleven send delegates to the model security council.

The reaction of students who have participated in sessions of such model international organizations has been enthusiastic. Not only do such sessions stimulate general interest in international relations, but in addition they build a knowledge of procedure and structure of international organizations, a familiarity with reports and documents of the United Nations, an understanding of international problems currently influencing relations of the Great Powers, and a recognition of the difficulties under which the United Nations must labor. The model security council or assembly is not just a rehearsal of past events in the Security Council or General Assembly of the United Nations, although such events must provide the foundation for all action taken by the model group. Instead, the sessions of the model international organs are creative and develop initiative, for they start with what has been done to date and attempt to arrive at new decisions, all the while functioning within the general framework of the over-all foreign policies of the states involved.