The original plan of this paper included a general survey and critique of the leading tendencies in the study of politics during the last thirty or forty years. It was intended to compare the methods and results of the various types of political thought—to pass in review the historical school, the juridical school, the students of comparative government, the philosophers as such, the attitude of the economist, the contributions made by the geographer and the ethnologist, the work of the statisticians, and finally to deal with the psychological, the sociological, the biological interpretations of the political process.

It would have been an interesting and perhaps a useful task to compare the scope and method of such thinkers as Jellinek, Gierke, Duguit, Dicey and Pound; the philosophies of Sorel and Dewey, of Ritchie and Russell, of Nietzsche and Tolstoi; to review the methods of Durkheim and Simmel, of Ward and Giddings and Small; of Cooley and Ross; and to discuss the developments seen in the writings of Wallas and Cole.

It would have been useful possibly to extend the analysis to the outstanding features of the environment in which these ideas have flourished, and to their numerous and intimate relations and interrelations.

Education is admittedly a comprehensive and vague term. It may be used to imply all the training which life affords to any individual member of human society. In a narrower and customary sense it has reference to requirements more or less technical which a community makes of its younger members. Whether viewed in its larger or in its narrower meaning it amounts to a process through which the individual progresses toward a more or less useful place in society.

In the phrase “educational function” is included a large group of federal activities which tend directly or indirectly to influence popular intelligence and accordingly help in the establishment of public policy and law. Such activities frequently underlie legal development in one or another direction. They account occasionally for the creation of new laws.

Well educated as were most of the framers of the Constitution, it is a notable fact that in the long course of their debates in the Convention of 1787 they gave slight attention to the subject of education. In a few minds of that epoch there was a dim ideal of the probable future necessity of instructing the democracy. But public schools at the time were unsystematized and undeveloped.

The fact that a sociologist has been requested to appear upon the program of the American Political Science Association is in itself far more significant than any remarks which may be made upon the subject of the relation of sociology to political theory. It is an admission that some political scientists have at last come to consider sociology of sufficient significance to students of politics to be worthy a brief survey of its contributions to modern political theory.

Many of the more liberal and progressive political scientists will doubtless ask themselves if this is not erecting a man of straw, and will inquire if there was ever a time when political scientists were not willing to consider the doctrines of sociology. One or two brief reminders will doubtless allay this suspicion. It was only about twenty years ago that a leading New York daily is reputed to have characterized a distinguished American sociologist as “the fake professor of a pretended science.” About a decade ago an ex-president of this association declared in a twice published paper that sociology was essentially worthless and unscientific and that all of its data had already been dealt with more adequately by the special social sciences.

“A treaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena; no one can say just how or when the final blow will fall—but one thing is certain—it will never leave the arena alive.” When John Hay put this in his diary he had been secretary of state for six years. During this period he had seen seventeen treaties borne from the Senate, lifeless or so mutilated by amendments that they could not survive. We can pardon the harassed secretary's earlier statement. “The fact that a treaty gives to this country a great, lasting advantage, seems to weigh nothing whatever in the minds of about half the Senators. Personal interest, personal spites, and a contingent chance of petty political advantage are the only motives that cut any ice at present.”

It is, however, with the objective aspect of Secretary Hay's statement that we are primarily concerned. Statesmen, as others, may occasionally express impatience, but if the practical function of the Senate in treaty making is that of the matador at a bull fight, there are more serious grounds for concern. If its duties resemble those of picadors or banderilleros, the matter is serious enough, and of its goading tactics we have early evidence. Thus, John Quincy Adams writes in his diary: “Mr. Crawford told twice over the story of President Washington's having at an early period of his Administration gone to the Senate with a project of a treaty to be negotiated, and been present at their deliberations upon it. They debated it and proposed alterations, so that when Washington left the Senate-chamber he said he would be damned if he ever went there again. And ever since that time treaties have been negotiated by the Executive before submitting them to the consideration of the Senate.”

During 1918–20 twenty-four states enacted some form of pension legislation for public officials and employees. Congress established a retirement system for civil service employees. Various Canadian provinces, several British colonial governments, and a few European states legislated in favor of civil pensions.

In the United States this recent activity is the culmination of a half century of agitation, experimentation and controversy in the matter of civil pensions, whether national, state, county or municipal. Private pensions in various American industries have doubtless favorably influenced the development of government pensions.

This development has resulted in the use of many conflicting definitions of the term “pension.” Due to some aversion to that word, many confusing substitute terms have been used such as: retirement system, vocational insurance, deferred pay, indefinite leave of absence, retiring salary, graduated bonus, gratuity, annuity, superannuation allowance, service relief, old age assurance, provident fund, actuarial equivalent, and public officers' guarantee fund. As used in this article the term civil pension is intended to imply a regular allowance granted to a person for that person's maintenance or the maintenance of one or more persons dependent on the pensioner, that allowance being usually paid in consideration of the pensioner's meritorious services to the grantee; but it may be granted as a deferred wage or salary, as an annuity or as a form of regularly paid charity without reference to any consideration of gratuity, of wages, or of deferred dividends.

What is the pluralistic theory of the state? Roughly speaking, we may identify the pluralistic theory as that theory which denies the logical validity and the practical and moral adequacy of the traditional doctrine of state sovereignty, or of the doctrines of sovereignty which have prevailed since the eras of Bodin and Hobbes, and have in a peculiar degree dominated political thought since the time of John Austin. Although the pluralist dogma does not take precisely the same form for all of its adherents, views held in common by them all are to be found in the chief criticisms which they offer against what they regard as the now prevailing notions of state authority and competence. The pluralists maintain that sovereignty is not, in any community, indivisible, and they deny that the state either is or ought to be sovereign in any absolute or unique sense. They cite many facts of recent political and social experience to discredit the belief that the state does persistently exercise sovereignty over other essential social groups; they argue that the tendency of social and industrial change today is in the direction of a progressive weakening and narrowing of state power; and they hold that the effect of a still further disintegration and decentralization of authority will be to improve the economic, moral and intellectual well-being of man and society.

In 1871 France was defeated in a six-months' war, by a rival seeking revenge for the humiliations of Jena and Auerstadt. In 1918 France emerged the victor from a fifty-one months' struggle with the same foe. But, unhappily, the spoils reaped from her victory offered slight compensation for the sacrifices she had recently been compelled to make or for the penalties she had paid forty-seven years before. The year 1918, indeed, saw the return of Alsace-Lorraine and the complete restoration of the territorial unity of the French nation; it witnessed no upheaval of government; it experienced no communist revolution. But it found France socially, politically and morally disorganized and exhausted; it found her finances upon the verge of bankruptcy; it found her manhood decimated by some fourteen hundred thousand, and one-tenth of her richest provinces scourged by the flame of war. The year 1918 found France with a form of government which in many respects was regalian and unrepresentative; it found profiteers not only preying upon the necessities of the people but systematically evading the payment of taxes; it found labor tremendously powerful and wielding its strength not so much to force the adoption of economic reforms, as to achieve distinct political privileges. The year 1918 found France confronted with a revengeful Germany, whose recuperative powers seemed far greater than her own, in a position likely to become more tragic with the developing antagonism of England and Italy and the probable withdrawal of the United States from European affairs. In fact, to many her situation appeared desperate: internal discord was undermining the social structure, while, across the Rhine, Berlin seemed preparing to fall upon a decadent state.

The Institute of Politics, held at Williamstown, Massachusetts, during the month of August, originated in a proposal made in 1913 by President Garfield of Williams College to the trustees of that institution. The plans of President Garfield were followed so faithfully in the final establishment and operation of the Institute that no separate description of those plans is needed here. Through the generosity of Mr. Barnard M. Baruch, who responded cordially to President Garfield's invitation to supply the funds needed for the project, and the liberality of the trustees of Williams College, the original conception was given complete fruition. Mr. Baruch's support was, moreover, pledged for the first three sessions of the Institute, thus making certain that meetings will be held in 1922 and 1923.

From the historical point of view no more interesting case was decided last term than that of Missouri v. Holland, in which a bill in equity brought by the state of Missouri to prevent a game warden of the United States from attempting to enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of July 3, 1918, and the regulations made by the secretary of agriculture in pursuance of this act was finally dismissed, Justices Van Devanter and Pitney dissenting without opinion.

The objectors to the statute and the underlying treaty based their argument upon the Tenth Amendment, supplemented by the proposition that the control of migratory birds within their respective limits is a power reserved to the states, and from these premises they proceeded to draw the conclusion that “what an act of Congress could not do unaided, in derogation of the powers reserved to the states, a treaty cannot do.” But, Justice Holmes answers in his opinion for the court, the treaty-making power is expressly delegated to the United States, treaties made under the authority of the United States are the supreme law of the land, and by article 1, section 8, Congress may pass all laws necessary and proper to carry valid treaties into effect.

The constitutional convention of Massachusetts which assembled in the city of Boston, June 6, 1917, and finally terminated its labors at a short session of two days in August, 1919, is the fourth body of this kind which the Old Bay State has had. The first convention was held in 1779 and 1780 in Cambridge and Boston, and formulated the constitution of 1780. This instrument, to which sixty-six amendments have been added, is the oldest written constitution now in force anywhere in the world. The second convention was held in 1820, and submitted a series of resolutions part of which were adopted and part rejected by the people. A third convention met in 1853 all of whose proposals were rejected. After an interval of sixty-four years, a fourth convention was called, which met in 1917 and again in 1918 and yet again in 1919. It submitted to the people twenty-two amendments and a revised draft of the constitution, all of which were accepted.

The convention was composed of 320 delegates. Of these 16 were elected at large, 4 were elected by each congressional district, and the remaining 240 were elected from the districts created for the purpose of choosing members of the state house of representatives. They were elected without party designations, but before the election took place, the lines between the friends and the opponents of the initiative and referendum were rather sharply drawn, and this served practically all the purposes of party organization and designation. In fact, this question dominated the whole of the first session of the convention and overshadowed other questions which were probably of greater importance.

Apart from the appropriation bills the legislative record of the third (and final) session of the Sixty-sixth Congress was almost entirely negative. That was to be expected. The only purpose of a short session is to care for supply and Congress is fortunate if it is able to do this. A session of the old Congress after the election of the new, is one of the most striking anomalies of representative government in the United States.

The business of the session raised a number of interesting questions of congressional procedure. There was the usual discussion of the seniority rule for the chairmanships of the committees, with proposals for supplanting it by free election. But the admitted evils of a system under which men hold their posts not according to fitness but to length of service are known while those of a new scheme are not, and no change is contemplated. In the Senate, the situation was amazing. For day after day it laid the appropriation bills aside and discussed a makeshift, compromise tariff bill when it was sure that President Wilson's inevitable veto could not be overridden.

Rules of procedure in legislative bodies, once a matter of convenience, have now become weapons of political and personal warfare. Nowhere is this more evident than in the American Congress. In the house of representatives individual members are ready to seize every opportunity afforded by the rules to make themselves prominent and embarrass those who have the pending measure in charge; and when action is to be taken by the house, guillotine is almost always used. The proposed program is reported by the committee on rules and the house proceeds to a cut and dried decision determined upon by the leaders.

It is now nine years since the outbreak of the Chinese revolution. It is fifteen years since the Manchus attempted to maintain their control by introducing representative institutions into China. The development toward constitutional and representative government under the Manchus was checked in 1911 by the revolutionary movement. When the Chinese Republic was established as the successor to the alien Manchu Empire it was felt that the problem of modernizing China bade fair to be solved, and that in an orderly way her political institutions would be brought into harmony with western standards. Unfortunately that orderly progress has not come. Parliamentary government under the Nanking (provisional) Constitution was replaced by the dictatorship of Yuan Shih-kai under the arrangements of the so-called constitutional compact, which in turn was followed by the attempt to reëstablish the monarchy. The failure of the monarchy movement brought back parliamentary government, but before a permanent constitution could be adopted Parliament was again dissolved, and a government controlled by a military clique set up in its place. Since this military government was unacceptable to the southern provinces, the country became divided. So far it has not been possible for the country to reconcile its differences. Instead of an ordered constitutional progress, has come apparent failure in the effort to establish representative government. The name of a republic has been maintained, it is true, and the forms of constitutional government have been retained, but a permanent national government has not been set up, nor has popular government replaced the paternal despotism of the past.