When Jonathan Swift described the episode of Laputa in his Gulliver's Travels his genius for satire took on a prophetic dimension. The Laputans were a strange race of men — a star-gazing, introspective people who decorated their clothing with emblems of the sun, moon, stars, and various musical instruments and served their food in fancy geometrical patterns. They devoted their time to the study of mathematics, astronomy and other subjects devoid of concrete claims and when in public were always accompanied by “flappers” to call them back from the far reaches of abstraction and impracticality. Swift employed great imagination and rich wealth of detail in heaping contempt upon the abstract mind.

InTheYears following the second World War, Western diplomacy was confronted with staggering problems. Some of these have been results of long developments, others of more recent origin. Meetings between Mussolini and Hitler and between the dictators and Western statesmen are glaring examples of a new brand of diplomacy which was characterized by lack of preparation through traditional diplomatic channels. Subsequent events disclosed not only some weaknesses of democracies in international politics but exposed even more the lack of good faith and other destructive tendencies of totalitarian diplomacies. Not only did Western foreign policy fail to answer adequately the challenges of a crumbling world order, but totalitarian diplomacy also erred often and gravely. Mussolini's diplomatic mistakes caused the doom of Fascist Italy and Hitler's blunders contributed greatly to the destruction of Nazi Germany. The Nazi-Soviet deal and Stalin's overextended faith in Hitler are prize examples of diplomatic miscalculations.

AllOfUs who have considered the problem of enjoying contemporary art are aware that the most serious barriers to it are the reluctance on the part of many painters and sculptors to put aside the notion that a work of art must mirror the physical world about us and their unwillingness to accept the fact that all true art must go “through the looking glass” — that is beyond the mirror.

FrenchSocialism has suffered from ideological uncertainty for seventy-five years. Although the party has not been a disassociated, irresponsible cult, it has never had sufficient popular support to implement its ideals by democratic action. Now, in the Fifth Republic, such a prospect seems more remote than ever. More than fifty years as a single, organized party has only led to frustration, marked in the last instance by a schism over support of General de Gaulle. Why has this happened?

WithinTheLast decade, the United Nations has undergone three modifications which, taken separately, are quite significant; together, they represent a true metagenesis of the Organization.

The first modification paralleled a development which had occurred in the League of Nations: both organizations were designed to be led, if not controlled, by the powerful members permanently seated in the League's Council and the United Nations' Security Council. In both organizations, however, the less powerful member states, in spite of the constitutional provisions, have persisted in endeavoring to assert themselves and have sought in numbers a balance to, and — whenever feasible — a substitute for, the authority lodged with the few strongest nations. The ultimate acquisition of prestige by the Assembly of the League of Nations was their success.