As the American Political Science Association nears the half century mark of its existence it seems appropriate to consider the broad significance of a professional group devoted to the study of government. Political science as a subject of systematic inquiry started with Aristotle but as a profession it has won its greatest recognition in the United States and within our generation. One fact is clear: no other country in the world today has so large, so well-trained, so competent a profession dedicated to the teaching and analysis of government.

Whatever the current climate of opinion may be, these are the men and women who, from day to day in classroom and study, must explain in lectures and in writing the nature of political systems, foreign and domestic. This profession, which has flourished so greatly in the last fifty years, is now a part of our national strength: it is the core of that broad and continuing study of government and thoughtful concern with politics vital to the successful operation of free institutions. I want to tell you why I think the study of governmental matters and a wider understanding of political problems has a fresh urgency for us as a nation and the bearing this in turn has on the development of political science as a discipline.

Let me first of all thank you most heartily for your kind invitation to this luncheon. As an old hand in the political science field myself, I take a special pleasure in this opportunity of establishing contacts with your Association. Need I tell you that no occasion offering me such an opportunity could have been more welcome than this one because of the honour which you bestow today upon Ralph Bunche. The election of Dr. Bunche as President of your Association is a high tribute to his personal qualities and achievements. I am proud to be present here today to join in that tribute.

The political scientists had a great share in the creation of the United Nations Organization. And they are doing much in the classroom, in publications, and by their daily influence on public affairs to explain, to strengthen, and to help the Organization. Meeting you here today it is natural for me to try to explain how the United Nations' world looks from the inside to a social scientist who long ago had to abandon scientific work but who, in the back of his mind, in whatever job he has had to try, has given much thought to the challenge that the special activities in which he was engaged presented to his scientific imagination and conscience.

Following the general election of September, 1953, the German Social Democratic party (SPD) finds itself in the role of a sole opposition party, a phenomenon in modern German politics. Confronted by a nearly solid phalanx of anti-socialist parties, the SPD approaches a period of crisis and of continuous strain. The ability of the Government to marshal an absolute majority at all times and a two-thirds majority when need be, threatens to relegate the party to virtual legislative impotence. Yet there are several factors militating for the continued existence of the SPD as a vigorous opposition party. Not having to compete with an irresponsible Communist organization in Western Germany, the SPD can be considered as the principal representative of the working class. Furthermore, its long history, its highly developed organizational apparatus, the discipline and devotion of its rank and file, coupled with the will to attain power, make the SPD a factor of relative significance in German as well as in European politics.

On the other hand, the dynamics of the East-West conflict, and especially Germany's geographic and political relation to it, tend to affect the political fortunes of the party somewhat adversely. The international situation represents a deadly challenge to the SPD and its survival as an influential political organization may well depend upon its ability to generate a counterforce to the pressures exerted upon Germany by the super-powers.

The British Commonwealth of Nations is the oldest international organization of states in existence. Its uniqueness lies in its unbroken historical continuity, the loyalty of its members to each other, their solidarity on vital matters of common concern, the fluidity of their machinery for dealing with such matters, and their abhorrence of constitutional contracts within the family of the Commonwealth. These are its features so far as we can see them yet in the perspective of history. This article will discuss some of these features and advance an hypothesis for research on the nature of Commonwealth.

Continuity, with change but without revolution, has been the British political formula for the Commonwealth. The evolution of the Commonwealth was one of the long-range consequences of the American Revolution. In a broad historical sense the Commonwealth is the lesson that Britain drew from that revolution. There have been other examples in history, such as Rome and Spain, of the expansion overseas of a people and of its concepts, language, traditions, and institutions. But only in the case of the Commonwealth has historical continuity been maintained without catastrophic change or revolution. It is true that revolution severed the main branch of the first British Empire. The cause of that revolution was the still unresolved deadlock between executive and legislature which had caused the revolt under Cromwell in the preceding century.

The structure of the British Commonwealth of Nations is peculiar. If it did not exist, you could not invent it. Its peculiarities reveal themselves at once if we try to find an answer to what looks like a fairly simple question, namely: How do we know whether a country is inside the Commonwealth or outside it? This question has never been very easy to answer. It is not enough to say that a country is within the Commonwealth if it is one of the Queen's dominions. That is quite true so far as it goes. It covers the cases of such important countries of the Commonwealth as the United Kingdom itself, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, Ceylon, and the British West Indian Colonies. But it will not suffice to describe the position of such countries as Malaya, or Nigeria, or Uganda, or the Gold Coast, or Kenya, or Tanganyika. Large parts or all of the territories of these countries are not part of the Queen's dominions, strictly speaking. They are either protected states (as in Malaya) or protectorates (as in most of the African territories) or, as in the case of Tanganyika, Trust Territories under the United Nations. What we must say of these countries of the Commonwealth is not that they are part of the Queen's dominions but that they are under the Queen's protection or jurisdiction.

The two dynamic political forces in the British Commonwealth are those of nationalism and democracy, and they are in close alliance. This fact is most evident in the older dominions, which were colonized from the British Isles, or, in the case of Canada and South Africa, partially colonized also from France and Holland. The genesis of their nationality was evident when as colonies they gropingly aspired to become autonomous political communities, standing on their own feet, seeking to shape their own future, not isolated from the metropolitan power, but also not subservient to it. In them the prevailing concept of a nation has been that of a people organized to achieve within the state the ends of popular freedom and political order. Owing to the liberating and levelling ways of the frontier, a new land provided special scope for the ideas and sentiments of democracy and hence the more readily generated among the people a potent sentiment for itself.

Since the outbreak of the Korean War, the free world has made erratic but continuous progress in its effort to achieve military parity with the Communist bloc. Success in this enterprise and the realization of a “situation of strength” would bring to the fore the problem of serious negotiations with Soviet Russia. Several analysts, including Winston Churchill, have already made strong pleas for reviving the “lost art” of diplomacy as a means of obtaining some settlement of the Cold War.

Speaking in a somewhat different military context, before the U.S.S.R. developed the atomic bomb but prior to the Western rearmament effort, Churchill observed:

In the academic year 1939–40, it would have taken a hardy prophet to forecast that the field of international legal studies was destined soon to become a major growing point in American legal education. Yet, for that reason and because it was the last year before World War II registered its impact on law school faculties, students, and even curricula, it provides a useful baseline from which to measure the developments that have since been taking place in this field among American law schools.

The law school work offered in 1939–40 which could be fitted within the category of international legal studies was represented by courses and seminars in International Law, Comparative (and Roman) Law, and Conflict of Laws. A brief survey of these offerings will lay bare the grounds for pessimism as to the prospects for progress at that time.

The political theory implicit in social casework theory can be defined, for purposes of this discussion, as the theory of the relationship between man and society on which professional social casework is consciously predicated, or that theory of the relationship which is logically implied by social casework practice. This theory is not often consciously articulated and we must look for it, therefore, in those presuppositions underlying casework theory which are frequently accepted uncritically, if not wholly unconsciously. This practice obviously cannot be carried on without basic (although perhaps not entirely conscious) presuppositions about what man is like and consequently about what society can or ought to do for him.

The presuppositions underlying social casework theory, although important in any context, have acquired a new significance to the extent that social casework has increasingly become a government function. During the past twenty years literally millions of people in the United States have been brought into a new relationship with officials of their local, state, and national governments—namely, the relationship of client and social caseworker.

Perhaps no period of modern history has been more a victim of generalization than the Age of Enlightenment. The worship of reason and progress and belief in the essential goodness and perfectibility of human nature are most commonly associated with the 18th century climate of opinion. Many of the stereotypes which have been applied to it have automatically been transferred to Benjamin Franklin. Already to contemporaries of his old age, Franklin seemed the very personification of the Age of Reason. Condorcet, who had known Franklin personally, summed up his description of Franklin's political career as follows: “In a word, his politics were those of a man who believed in the power of reason and the reality of virtue.” In Germany, an admirer was even more enthusiastic: “Reason and virtue, made possible through reason alone, consequently again reason and nothing but reason, is the magic with which Benjamin Franklin conquered heaven and earth.” This is also the judgment of posterity. F. L. Mott and Chester E. Jorgensen, who have so far presented the most acute analysis of Franklin's thought and its relationship to the intellectual history of his time, do not hesitate to call him “the completest colonial representative” of the Age of Enlightenment. Unanimous agreement seems to exist that Franklin was “in tune with his time.”

The official beginnings of the Cooperative Research Project on Convention Delegations date from the opening of the project office at the Association's headquarters in Washington on March 10, 1952. But the project had roots reaching far back into previous activities. Two committees of the Association had made suggestions for activities similar to those eventually put under way by the project: the Committee on Political Parties and the Committee for the Advancement of Teaching. In September, 1951, following the Association's meeting in San Francisco, the then chairmen of those committees, Bertram M. Gross and Claude E. Hawley, began actively seeking means of organizing field work and creating teaching materials on the forthcoming preconvention campaigns and national political conventions of 1952. For a time it appeared that a project along those lines might be organized under the auspices of the Brookings Institution; and the director of the present project became involved in the conversations. Later it became clear that if the project were to be organized at all, it would probably need to be under the Association's own auspices, although the cooperation of the Brookings Institution was an important factor in early planning.

By November, 1951 the Executive Director of the Association had cleared a draft proposal with the other officers and began negotiations with several foundations. One of those foundations, although uninterested itself, passed on the proposal to Dr. Will W. Alexander, an adviser of a newly established family foundation in New Orleans.

On June 13, 1952, with two senators on the floor, the Senate of the United States gave its advice and consent to the ratification of three treaties which thereby became a part of the supreme law of the land. One of the senators did not vote. The other voiced his “aye” while serving as presiding officer.

The conventions approved by the voice vote of one senator were the Consular Convention with Ireland; a Protocol Supplementary to the said Convention; and the Consular Convention with the United Kingdom.

Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution provides that the President shall have power “to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur….” Even though, under Article I, Section 5, Clause 2, “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, …” how, as a matter of law, was it possible for the Senate, with but two senators on the floor, one of whom did not vote and the other of whom was in the chair, to give its advice and consent to a treaty? And as a matter of policy was the Senate in this case properly discharging its responsibilities?