In any appraisal of our national government and its ability to shoulder postwar domestic burdens, the rôle of the U. S. Civil Service Commission deserves scrutiny. “Good personnel administration is good public administration,” Herbert Emmerich argues conclusively, and the influence which the Civil Service Commission exerts throughout the entire field of federal personnel administration has reached a peak during the past few years never before approached. In what directions and with what success has this influence been wielded? To what extent have the wartime developments pointed the way to permanent gains? What is the probable rôle, what the desirable one, of the Commission in the next few years? These seem to me to be questions upon which we need all the informed points of view we can marshal.

The political scientist found various aspects of World War II of professional interest. Perhaps there were no fields as intimately related to political science as radar and atomic energy in the case of the physical sciences, though such agencies as the War Production Board, the Office of Price Administration, and the Office of Civilian Defense presented many problems of vital concern. Of the strictly military programs, it is probable that none involved so many aspects of political science as military government. Military government programs of some elaborateness were drafted for North Africa, Sicily and Italy, the Pacific Islands, Japan, Korea, and Germany and the countries which had been occupied by Germany. The military government activities in the European Theater of Operations surpassed all others in scope in that they involved both combat and post-hostility operations of great magnitude, necessitated dealings with both conquered and liberated peoples, required the establishment of a system of government from the bottom up through the state level in Germany, and were participated in by all four of the major Allied Powers. The European Theater of Operations also saw the widest use of officers who had been assigned on the basis of their specialist knowledge of various aspects of military-government activities. It may therefore be of some interest to the political science profession to comment on the general record of military government in the ETO.

The westward movement of settlement—into the semi-arid, treeless Great Plains beyond the 100th meridian—carried along with it traditions of local government familiar further east. Settlers organized their newfound lands into the counties, townships, and small school districts to which they were accustomed in the states of their origin. Local-government customs evolved in humid, populous areas were thus transposed to a region destined by weather and other physical conditions to remain a place of sparse population.

Predilections in government organization were fortified by a mistaken supposition that agricultural enterprise could be successfully organized and conducted according to the fashion of the East. The homesteading law generally in effect until 1909 (allowing but 160 acres to a settler) reflected this supposition. Moreover, the rectangular survey, with its gridiron of 36-square-mile sections, constituted a ready-made invitation to organize the congressional township as a governmental unit and to make much the same area the basis for school districts.

Over the years subsequent to the original peopling of this region, circumstance and harsh experience have forced a revision in predominant beliefs concerning its nature and capabilities. Adjustments in agronomic enterprise and population have perforce occurred, often painfully and distressfully. It remains to be seen what adjustments must correspondingly occur in the organization and functioning of local government, for the basic facts of a region must find reflection in the trials, tribulations, and performance of its overlying governmental institutions.