The Functional Approach in Historical PerspectiveAuthor(s): David MitranySource: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 47, No. 3(Jul., 1971), pp. 532-543Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Royal Institute of International AffairsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2614439Accessed: 10/10/2010 01:23

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THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE*

David Mitrany

'A T no period in history has human capacity for political creation been subjected to such continuous unremitting strain.' The new inventions and discoveries ' have rendered traditional ideas

of "what politics is about" almost as obsolete as astrology and alchemy. In this unique historical context, if we are to win through, a supreme effort of political creativity is needed'.- The whole of human society now is stirred and shaken by a threefold revolution-a political upheaval, a social surge and a scientific eruption which is moving beyond man's foresight and control. If these new forces are not to overwhelm the world, the world must learn how to bring them under common control. And for that, all the old political devices, from the Roman forum to the Russian soviet, from city-states to federations, would prove useless.

The situation is unique, unlike any other period or experience in history, in that the impact and repercussions of these revolutionary forces are felt across the whole universe. No country and no region can insulate itself against their effect. ' With satellites and space travel we have in truth reached the " no man's land " of sovereignty.' 2 These problems are global, and so must be the answers. While generally the sphere of politics had solidified over the years, its international sector was left to stagger along through the centuries without any common sense or common authority. We can do so no longer-that is our historical problem. Yet the very need to make good the deficiency means that past ways and means are of little help. Any assessment of the task has to begin with a simple but absolute proposition: that the whole of the traditional view of politics, as based upon and work- ing through power, is dead. The ultimate test of power is force and its use: when that has come to mean nuclear force, uncontrollable in its

* In July 1948 this journal printed the lecture given by Mr. Mitrany at Chatham House on 'The Functional Approach to World Organisation'. The lecture has been reprinted several times in volumes of international studies. The article above was the introductory paper (here somewhat reduced) for an international academic con- ference on 'Functionalism' which met at Bellagio in October 1969, under the joint auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Institute for the Study of International Organisation (University of Sussex).

1 Review article in the Times Literary Supplement, November 18, 1965. 2 See the author's A Working Peace System (Chicago: Quadrangle Books. 1966), p. 19.

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THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 533

penetration and effects, power has become too wild to be used as an instrument of policy. And so the whole corpus of theory and political devices linked to it no longer have relevance for the student or the statesman.

Nor does this philosophical assessment cover the whole human situation. There is a corollary, with ominous undertones. Politically, power is relevant when used in and by organised societies; the old world accepted some traditional restraints, and the tools of power were relatively tame. Now social life is dominated by the marvels of our technological and scientific achievements; these are cumulative, easily passed on in time and in space, and in fairness we are doing our best to make them available to all people, throughout the world. But human nature has not changed in step with and in relation to these mechanistic advances: there is no evidence that man's brain or his moral outlook are more advanced by one step than they were at the time of the classic Greeks. Indeed, there is some ground for fearing that reliance on mechanical slaves, with their blind obedience and easy replacement, is steadily blunting the humanistic sensibilities of our kind. That is the predicament of the new world society; our nuclear prowess may be putting Olympian thunderbolts within the reach of Calibans.

And there is a second corollary to the way things are going now. We cannot rely on any pattern or condition to stay put. Speaking sociologically, the present revolution, with its three interrelated sides, seems truly a permanent revolution; not like that of Marx, but in its very nature. There is no visible horizon or predictable spectrum to the social and political prospect-the only constant in our historical picture is change. Any scheme for a new international order must be able not only to contain and guide all the present currents, under their given conditions, but must also be capable of adapting its working to whatever fresh issues may come up as scientific ingenuity is pitted against old political ways and inhibitions. It will have to work there- fore with new ways of political organisation, breaking with the fixed untouchable territorial sovereignty of the past; and with an authority different from one based on power and its claims.3 Speaking generally, there are to my knowledge only two broad approaches to that task: a political-constitutional approach, or a functional-sociological approach.

THE POLITICAL-CONSTITUTIONAL APPROACH

The political-constitutional approach is a natural one for us, with its outlook and practice settled since the Middle Ages in a whole range

'3 The risks of nuclear warfare may be too great to be combined reliablv with what has heretofore been considered a key attribute of sovereignty: the unilateral right of a sovereign state to alter its strategic or political views.' (Henry Kissinger, New York Times, December 3, 1968.)

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of polities, from duchies to empires. In our own time it was given fresh life with the formal enactment of the principle of 'national self- determination' at Versailles in 1919, and the mass creation of new states, even without a national base, after World War II. At the same time, the shock of that war brought fervent calls for 'world govern- ment', 'world federation' and other such 'pre-fabricated Cities of God'; calls uncluttered by the baggage of practical ways and means, but all patently resting on the old conception of a 'state', of a compre- hensive and closed political system. Many students, with more scholarly caution, in their search for a line of advance have in recent years fallen back upon the indeterminate concept of 'integration '-which is apt to range in its use from world government to the internal consolida- tion of new states. In this article we are concerned only with the international range-can historical experience help us with that?

T'he article on 'Integration' in the new International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1968, vol. 7, sec. III) notes that scholars use the term widely but are far from iagreed on what they mean by it. In so far as political unions have emerged in modern history, they have led to some national unit-the union of England and Scotland, of the American states, of the German Empire, and so on; all of these have been searched by colleagues for guiding lights,4 and generally it seems clear that their own quest has also been for some kind of political- territorial 'integration'. Now, whatever the nature of the grouping, it seems certain that its dimension iholds many consequences for its working. One might note that political ideology by itself (whether democratic or communist or fascist) has not, any more than race or religion, proved a sufficient adhesive. On the other hand, it is evident that the larger the number and diversity of the initial partners- generally a desirable basis in functional arrangements-the harder the prospect for political union. An inverse ratio would generally be a fair assumption. No rigid limit can be laid down, but it is as certain as any physical law that there is a limit, that political integration makes no sense and has no substance as a globally unifying principle and prospect.

THE REGIONAL AND THE GLOBAL DIMENSIONS

As far as I know, it will indeed be found that political scientists who have tried to identify the elements of integration have all fallen

4 The attractiveness of some past political experiment does not prove its fitness for the present conditions. In a friendly debate some years ago in the review Common Cause (Chicago), I submitted that it was patently fallacious to use the success of the American Union as an example for a wider international union now. The argument might have been valid in some degree if the original thirteen states had developed until our own day as separate national states. In that case, could they be federated now?

THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 535

back upon some regional dimension for a valid framework-without following earlier regionalists who simply prescribed an 'intermediate stage' with the easy assumption that a string of 'intermediates' would end by coagulating into a universal union. Now even some functionalists have sought refuge in the regional dimension; for to be able to identify such seemingly unifying elements as ' spill-over ', ' epigenesis ' and so on they have to place them in a restricted area; and so the end-product could only be a restricted political unit. What that adds up to, therefore, is not a 'neo-functionalism', as these efforts have been dubbed, but a semi-functionalism; with one half, the process, new in parts, but the ultimate prospect stuck firmly in the old sovereign-territorial concept of political organisation.

Without presuming to say that these points are self-evident, one may claim that they are evident enough: that political integration can come about only within a limited dimension; that the greater the number of units to be integrated, the more dubious the prospect; that the greater their number and variety, the more intense would have to be the pressures for giving them a new cohesion, and thus some distinctness from the rest of the world. Admittedly, all these are speculative arguments. But the factual evidence is even stronger. All attempts at political union since World War II have failed, some tragically, leaving greater disunity behind, though the federal idea was a tried one and though there were sound natural grounds for some of the attempts. In Western Europe the Six also started with ideas for political union, but even limited proposals, like the Fouchet plan, are still on the shelf; and any addition to membership would cloud the prospect of political union still further. Nor have the countries of the Warsaw Pact shown any greater inclination, in spite of their need for mutual ideological insurance. There must be solid reasons for these perplexities and hesitations.

THE NEW S1'ATE

One central reason is hidden in the general trend towards con- centration in government. The 'integration' school have, if anything, given even less thought to the opposite implications of the idea-not the global but the municipal: the utter transformation of the state under the pressures of nuclear security and the new philosophy of social security. When the political organs so penetrate the life of the community through economic and social planning that public and private sectors can hardly be separated, we cross a threshold which has been jealously guarded in modem times.

Soviet Russia offers the fullest example. 'It is a distinguishing mark of this kind of regime that there is nowhere any firm distinction between the state and the rest of society.' It is 'a forcible amalgama-

536 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

tion of the two', a permanent revolution from above. We used to think of autocracy as something static and remote, but 'Soviet autocracy is dynamic, and pervasive in the highest degree'.5 The whole system thus becomes a vast all-embracing, self-propagating administration and no 'politics' is left-not in the sense we ihave understood and used the concept in the West.

But the trend is not peculiar to dictatorship-in fact, even dictator- ships now have to be service dictatorships. Whatever the form of the state, everywhere the executive is gaining in power and the represen- tative element is falling away. Yet the spreading intrusion of the state and its servants is not an arbitrary imposition, as under the old autocracies, but the response of the political system to ever-widening popular claims. All the old federations, though national in make-up, are facing stresses between the centre and the parts because they are tied to fixed written constitutions. Even an old unitary country like Great Britain is now experiencing new local pressures from Scotland and Wales.

In a newly integrated regional system the task of re-creating economic and social unity out of mixed parts, and within a reasonably short time, would make the pressures for concentrating policy-making and administration all the more insistent. Here again we need not rely merely on critical speculation: we have the benefit of a straight opinion from the most developed regional authority to date, the European Commission itself. In the Statement it sent to the European Parliament on July 1, 1968, the Commission declared that the time had come to 'take a step forward in the field of political union'. The existing Community Treaties should be replaced by ' a single treaty ' in which 'the single 'Commission must be given implementing powers, powers that enable it not only to take the initiative in Community progress but also genuinely to nmanage the Community, for the task of management grows each time a new Community policy comes into force '.6 And then, to complete the picture, it simply tells the European Parliament that 'It would be wrong to wait until the European people [sic] as a whole is officially consulted and takes part constitutionally and organically in the political life of the European Continent'.

Whatever else it may be or do, the 'integration' of a region or other grouping under present conditions is bound to end with the temper and ways of the national state; the political shape will be changed, but not its political nature. It is difficult to follow students of 'integration' when they assume that their models and analysis of' institutional growth could be valid' over the whole political range by

5 G. L. Arnold, The Pattern of World Conflict (New York: Dial Press. London: Allen & Unwin. 1955), p. 114.

6 Italics are the author's.

THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 537

simple extrapolation. Beyond a certain point any comparison between the nature of an egocentric regional system and the limitless purpose of a universal system becomes meaningless. The 'actor roles' become so different and distant in scope that they no longer belong to the same discourse of theory or world of achievement. One may admire the European Economic Community, but as students we cannot but be aware that, internationally and historically speaking, its limits are also its limitations.

Perhaps one might illustrate the point, and the urgencies of our position, with a global problem which well shows how new our new world is-the problem of the deep seabed. There is wide support for the view that only some special arrangement by and under the United Nations could deal with it; not only is there no standing rule or precedent that fits it, but perhaps the most respected rule of interna- tional law, the grand old rule of the 'freedom of the seas ', may actually prove an obstacle to the collective solution of this vital issue. Indeed, the UN declaration of legal principles in regard to space, to which both Russia and America have given their assent, would seem to confirm that dilemma. For in declaring that the moon and other celestial bodies should be free for exploration by all 'in conformity with international law' and not subject to sovereign claims, does that not in fact restate the doctrine of the 'freedom of the seas '? The old rule may well be taken as a licence for a scramble for the deep seabed more wanton than the 19th-century 'scramble for Africa'. And so the only established international rule does not protect, but abandons, the seabed, and by a misshapen analogy now also space, to the few who can explore and exploit them, and in effect passes by the claims of the world community at large.

The inescapable conclusion must be that in so far as political 'integration' has to work within a regional or other limited dimension, it has nothing to contribute towards the taming of the nuclear night- mare, much less towards the looming problems on the seabed and in space.

THE FUNCTIONAL ALTERNATIVE

The peacemakers at the end of the two world wars had little prescience of the world for which they were legislating: their thinking and policies still moved within the politics of sovereignty, of private security and development. But now the effort must somehow embrace and control all the three revolutionary elements; and while the creation of new states is about reaching its limit, the social pressures are still in flood, and the scientific-technological eruption is beyond anyone's control. And there is something more beyond their unpredictable dynamics: politically these two trends are moving in critical opposition.

538 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

The scientific-technological trend is heavy with global issues which demand global answers; the 'planned' social-economic scheme of things- is hardening the national state into a tighter working unit, for the first time really close to the oft-used organic analogy.

That is the existential situation out of which student and policy- maker have to shape some common system; and the task bears little resemblance to the measured process of state-making since the end of the Middle Ages. If in such conditions political regrouping along old lines cannot open a path to global co-existence, what of the alternative? This is not the place to restate the general lines of the functional idea. Here we are concerned with its fitness for the issues and conditions we have sketched out; and perhaps the clearest confrontation is to look at the main doubts raised by some political scientists.

The most frequent criticism has been that functional arrangements are unlikely to end in some form of comprehensive 'integration', of the kind discussed above. That may well prove true, but it is a mis- conception both of the historical task and of the functional philosophy and purpose. Our present historical task is 'to bring the nations actively together, not to keep them peacefully apart'; and so find ways for the common government of the new critical global issues. That is precisely what the functional way tends to offer, as it cuts across existing political, ideological, geographical and racial divisions, without. in the process breeding fresh distinctions and divisions of its own.

Some critics have raised a second 'basic' issue-that functionalism does not take enough account of the working of politics; that 'the impact of politics upon functionalism may never give it a chance to test the impact of functionalism upon politics'. We have indeed seen that tragically illustrated in the Middle East and between India and Pakistan, between North and South in Ireland, and between East and West in Europe generally. But what are the. implications of the criticism? Surely, not that these inimical regimes might join in some political union where they refuse limited and mutually beneficial work- ing arrangements? Has it not been proved that the mere mention of political union between the two Irelands, of federation between Pakistan and India, causes the two sides to raise the barriers and bolt the gates more firmly against each other? Is the reluctance to join in visibly beneficial practical arrangements not due precisely to a fear that these might overlay old political spites in the minds of their- peoples?

No theory and no experience can force states and politicians to work together if they are intent upon fighting each other. The whole sense of the functional approach springs from an 'agonising re- appraisal' of the essence and working of such traditional international politics; and its submissions are solidly related to the historical and

THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 539

sociological essence of world society now. The welfare surge is so powerful and universal that it makes a new and insistent claim upon international co-operation; in the new undeveloped states-and even in India and elsewhere-their revolutionary social-nationalism, para- doxically, could hardly make much headway without a new benevolent internationalism. Some students indeed have taken it for granted-as an inherent limitation rather than as a criticism-that functional arrange- ments are mainly suitable for 'non-controversial.' matters, especially in the field of welfare. Until the end of World War II it may have been reasonable to link functionalism with welfare and such things, but since then the picture has changed dramatically.

Since the war the coming of nuclear power, of space exploration and other ' one-world ' issues has shown that there is no alternative to mutual functional arrangements for these most controversial and most fateful international issues. That was proved when the two leading atomic powers, America and Russia, jointly offered in 1968 a strictly functional answer to the problem of nuclear control through the revised non-proliferation treaty. That treaty is meant to ensure to all United Nations members access to the peaceful uses of atomic energy 'through an appropriate international body on which non-nuclear states would be represented'. What political arrangement, short of a fully fledged world government, could now provide an answer both for the control and the fair use of atomic power? What is the political answer for the control of the deep seabed and of space? No doubt, all such partial arrangements have their shortcomings. Would it be more promising for these particular needs and for peace in general not to attempt such working functional pacts, but instead to wait till Russia, the United States and China and others are ready to join in some compre- hensive political union?

THE HUMAN FACTOR

Finally, and again perhaps as an implied limitation rather than a criticism, it has been said that functionalism presumes a natural willing- ness of people and nations to work together. The two approaches, of course, express two attitudes towards human society, related to the view one takes of political man. Those who believe 'there will always be wars' presumably see human nature as incurably sinful-whether it be a matter of original sin or Freudian sin, or simply of our biological make-up-and so in need of political halters. On the other side, others have assumed that functionalism implies that man is innately 'good and rational, and devoted to the common weal'. The facts of political life show that he can be all that; but equally they show that he can be irrational and selfish and even vicious, whatever his standing and ' culture '. And one very relevant thing that experience teaches is that

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the constitution of a state and society (empire, monarchy, republic- theocratic, capitalist, socialist) has in this respect made no difference at all, and has never proved a reliable selector of the more decent and peaceful traits.

Functionalism is centred as much as anything else on a sense of this tragic dichotomy in human society and history. Therefore it would use, through a natural social selection, every prospect of linking together the life of the peoples in particular serving unities, removing as many sections of international life as possible from the ambit of confrontation to the ambit of co-existence; whereas from long experience a general political appeal has tended rather to draw out competitive-aggressive traits-and from the sanme people, in the same times and from the same devotion to a common weal. Indeed, its mass nature inevitably now makes politics appeal less to particular judgment than to collective identification-with a party, the nation, an ideology. And the sad para- dox is that the new advanced means of communication, instant and uniform, are proving complete servants of that trend.

We have reached a point where the once potent 'democratic' principle has become a snare and a delusion. The wide extension of the suffrage and the wide expansion of public action in matters that are largely technical, have between them produced a crisis in 'participation'. Priorities and policy are increasingly determined by the immediate purpose in hand, as worked out by 'experts', while the egalitarian idea rejects any selective qualification for the people's representatives. And so, the more government for the people, the less government by the people. And when a service or industry is wholly taken over for the people, through 'nationalisation', it is also taken out of the control of the people's forum, the sovereign Parliament. But the second is in no way inherent in the first; in the international sector each of the UN's specialised agencies has 'its own little functional parliament, which meets periodically and lays down policy, establishes the budget, and on the next occasion reviews the execution of that policy '.7 Such functional representation offers a valid remedy for the growing power and insula- tion of the administrator: it brings together those who know with the things they know, and in which they can both initiate policy and judge its performance. And given the present fluidity of economic and social life, policy has to be a matter of continuous and adaptable choice and action, not a grand one-time political act, like a general election. In the incipient vast ranges of international government no other way of real participation appears evident.

Functional arrangements are spreading because they are necessary; and the necessity is induced-apart from the older fields of welfare,

7 See the author's 'An Advance in Democratic Representation', in A Working Peace System (Chicago: Quadrangle Books. 1966), p. 125.

THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 541

health, common services-by our ceaseless scientific-technological cleverness. Every new invention, every discovery, is apt to give rise also to a new problem, one that demands joint control or mutual self- control. Broadcasting offers a good, though now a relatively simple, illustration. Radio is such a potent tool for everyday policy and govern- ment that no country could allow it to come under the kind of inter- national authority that it may accept for atomic power. Yet at the same time every country shows a strict observance of the wavelengths agreed internationally-simply because without such self-control the function could not function at all. Incidentally, this also shows how functional arrangements can be adapted to each particular task and the relationships it generates, using every dimension-regional or local or universal-that suits the nature of the task and the conditions of the moment.

There are in this respect two central aspects which should be emphasised, especially as they help to put into relief the contrast between political 'integration' and functionalism as general systems. It is not necessary, and in a way not desirable, that functional links should cover the whole range of international activities. To lay the basis for a peaceful international community it should be enough if, gradually, those activities were brought under joint control which concern the essential needs of the peoples at large; and, of course, those which by their nature are a threat to general security. Whereas with the present ways of 'planned' controls of economic and social life, the seeming success in covering the whole field and the whole range internationally would in fact tend to a totalitarian concentration, inevitably distant and heavy-handed, and so difficult to maintain in willing co-operation.

THE METHODOLOGICAL ERUPTION

These matters have to be spelled out because the yearning for a rounded, measurable international unity can prove a mental trap when its living implications are left out of sight-what L. T. Hobhouse named as the very essence of political science, the uncovering of the inner 'relation of things'. Even some students with a sympathy for the func- tional idea have complained that one could not find a comprehensive exposition of it as a system. The fact is true, but the complaint mis- conceived. Politically, the functional idea is not another dogmatic tenet with a prescribed form and structure, a 'system' with its own canonical blueprint. Rather is it a concept of community for the development of a lasting international community. It is a 'working' theory of how to fit into an international mould the new kind of 'service' state and gove rnment that are here to stay-but which at present are actually causing us to slip back from the great flowering of free economic and

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social intercourse that marked the 19th century. Under national ' planning ' every point of economic, and even cultural, contact is implicitly also a point of political contact,.and thus potentially also a. point of conflict. Can we in this new and dangerously unsteady con- stellation hope to do more than work to replace the hundreds of wilful national plans with communal international planning and controls,. whenever and wherever possible?

As a witness of the cataclysmic transformation of the historical scene I confess myself greatly baffled by the rash of methodological: efforts in pursuit of some 'scientific law' of international unity and. disunity. There was nothing like it before World War II, when life in. the world of states was more simple and predictable; there has been nothing like it since the war in the national field, though this is closer to our experience and steadier in its elements and problems. The idea that methodological refinements worked out in the study might precipi- tate, as in a chemical laboratory, a clear and stable solution of a unified global society out of the ancient and shifting amalgam of' peoples and states, of races and ideologies and claims and habits, is almost alarming in its academic complacency. '

The quality of science is to give a more exact insight into how things work under certain conditions. In the flood of international methodologies, with every practitioner tending to use a contrived idiom of his own, there is a risk tihat the more 'scientific', the less relevant it all becomes. Science is founded upon constants which impose their own unity upon all working in the particular field, but the international field is a turbulence of inconstants and of the unpredictable; and all the valiant efforts to fix and categorise them have in no way made them any less so. As these methodological endeavours have been especi- ally diligent in America, one might quote the judgment of two American colleagues: 'American labourers in the vineyard of international rela- tions seem no closer to agreement on a paradigm for international relations research than were their predecessors twenty years ago.' 8 'International relations . . . has ... numerous individualistic conceptual- izations about the " realities " and the study of those phenomena. . .. But the mechanisms of professional social controls are so inoperative as to place every serious question at issue on a basis of personal acceptance or rejection.' 9 That is a depressing state for the humanistic value of our voluminous work. We are engaged not in scholastic dis- putations but on uncovering a vital relation of things, on how world society might move in its social and political organisation from a war

8 William T. R. Fox, The American Study of International Relations (Columbia: Institute of Interrnational Studies, University of South Carolina. 1968), p. 116.

9 Charles A. McClelland, 'The Function of Theory in International Relations', Journ-ial of Conflict Resolution, September 1960, p. 306.

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system to a peace system. The immediate issue is nothing less than breaking away from a concept and practice which since the end of the Middle Ages had been inculcated as an ideal, the near worship of the national-territorial state. But if we are to wean our minds and our ways from that centuries-old political acceptance, the objectives must make sense to the vast generality of the peoples everywhere, and there- fore be stated in language which people everywhere can understand. Esoteric constructions and idiosyncratic academic codes are the surest way to make nonsense of the whole argument for a new way of political life.

We are standing at a crossroads, but do not know what kind of world we are reaching for. As Horace says in one of his Satires: 'We are all lost in the woods, the only difference is that we are lost in different directions.' It is beyond us, who live in the turmoil of the transition, to grasp how great an historical turning-point ours may prove to be. In some fundamental ways we are now breaking out of the earth- bound history of man, as it has been since its beginning, and moving into a new universe of action and relationships. Satellites, space-travel, ICBMs-what are they all leading to? They do not leave much of national frontiers, sovereignty, national isolation. But they conjure up very hard new problems, the imperative realities of our time. Function- alism in essence means just that: a direct attack on problems, mutual problems, as such; in the process building up, sector by sector, effective positive rules of international government-what Mr. Wilfred Jenks calls the 'new world law'.

For the student the spectacle is indeed strange-and it is the part of the student to try to see through the inner disorder of the new ' relation of things '. Powerful earthbound states prodigally use all the power and means they can command to push out into new spheres; every success widens the gap from the old political world; and the new threshold brings them face to face in new confrontations-which they are then forced to adjust within some common rule. It is an impossible contradiction, and it cannot last. We will go on acting the pretences of the old political ideas till some calamity blasts them out of the scheme of human organisation altogether.

David Mitrany, D.Sc., Ph.D., was formnerly Professor and Permanent Member in the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.; Visiting Professor at Harvard, Yale, Smith College, etc. Hon. Fellow of the Institute for the Study of International Organisation; Associate of the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex. A uthor of various works on the functional theory of international organisation, beginning with

'A Working Peace System' (1943).