The Dumbarton Oaks proposals for the establishment of a general international organization are not yet the definite charter of the future world organization. In strictly legal terms they are a tentative agreement between the United States, Great Britain, Russia and China which lays the foundations of the future organization. Preparation of its final charter is the task of the conference at San Francisco, convened for April 25th, of representatives of all the United Nations, small and large alike. It can be taken for granted that the structure will ultimately emerge from the general conference will not in all details resemble the structure agreed upon by the four great powers at Dumbarton Oaks. The criticism of the scheme by the governments of the middle and small states will have to be met by somehow blunting its hegemonic edges.
A realistic discussion of the use of war aims in political warfare perhaps starts best from a clear understanding of the fact that propagandists do not make foreign policy; they talk about it. They inform the world about the policy of the country for which they speak. They interpret this policy. They translate its meaning into language that will be understood by people who are not experts on foreign policy. They point up its success and conceal its failures. And they try to disparage the foreign policy of the enemy. The propagandist enjoys more freedom when he informs his audience than when he interprets.
The purpose of this paper is to consider certain implications of a program of freedom from want of food. It does not aim at predicting the future, but it attempts to indicate the nature and approximate magnitude of forces that would be released by policies intended to lift food standards everywhere to levels recognized as adequate in the advanced countries. The conclusions as to the long-term prospects of food supplies may appear pessimistic. It should be understood, however, that these conclusions are relevant only under conditions that may have little bearing on the immediate future.
Public debts have always attracted special attention, regardless of size and circumstances. From the times of the classical school of economics to our own days, emotional flares have lit the scene, the protagonists sometimes damning and sometimes praising this institution. And while such emotionalism is still evident here and there, on the whole the rational approach to the subject has probably won a lasting victory.
As plenipotentiary for the total war effort of Germany, Paul Joseph Goebbels found it necessary, even before the Third Reich was annihilated by the Allied armies, to start with his own hands the liquidation of some of his most cherished propagandistic institutions. In order to drain the last reserves of manpower for military needs, he had to dissolve institutions of the Nazi party itself. To this necessity the leisure time organization known as 'Strength through Joy' became a victim.
No man living has thought more earnestly and profoundly on the problems of democracy than Professor Heimann. I shall not make bold to refute him. But there are some ideas I’d like to add by way of loose commentary. Of course I agree that it is an error to imagine that any historical process whatever can lead inevitably to the establishment of democracy. American scholars have made much of the potency of free land in the development of American democracy. If free land gave us the democracy of the Middle West, it also gave us the slavery and subsequent racial oppression of the South.
Review of book by Hans Kelsen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1944. 155 pp.
Review of book by Andrew J. Krzeninski. New York: Devin-Adair. 1942. 176 pp.