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282 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. vii (1952)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0282 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD THIS volume of THE ANNALS contains the addresses delivered at the Fifty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Academy, held on April 18 and 19, 1952, on the general topic: The National Interest-Alone or With Others? An article by Frederick L. Schuman in the March 1952 issue of THE ANNALS, entitled International Ideals and the National Interest, relates to the same topic. The concept of the national interest is now being subjected to careful re-exami- nation and analysis in the light of the epochal changes that are occurring in the pattern of international society. This re-examination and analysis have probably been more searching and more broadly gauged than at any previous period; but, as the articles in this volume reveal, there is still a wide divergence of views on the nature of the national interest and on the desirable ways and means of reconciling conflicting national interests, both within a state and among states. This concern with the national interest seems to reflect a growing maturity of approach in this country to questions of foreign policy. The opening remarks of the first speaker at the Fifty-sixth Annual Meeting, Professor Hans J. Morgenthau, called attention to this point. The very fact that a society like The American Academy of Political and Social Science can organize a two-day meeting around the concept of the national interest of the United States, said Professor Morgen- thau, is significant in itself, for it shows the profound change which has come about in American thinking on matters of foreign policy. The question posed at the Fifty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Academy is, as Senator Sparkman declared, a basic issue which the policy makers afid all the American people must face squarely. We may assume as a matter of course that all loyal Americans sincerely desire to promote the national interests. Doubtless most of them are convinced that these interests can be advanced only with others and not alone. But, as has been suggested, there are many views on the exact nature of the national interest in general and of national interests in particular problem situations. This latter point is a matter of everyday observation. It is reflected in all studies of the subject. Charles A. Beard documented it in his im- portant study of The Idea of National Interest, published more than a decade and a half ago. Beard's own views of the national interest obviously did not coincide with those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, as even a casual examination of his bitter volumes on American foreign policy in the months prior to Pearl Harbor will show. The two jistinguished members of the United States Congress whose addresses ap- pear in this volume are united in their desire to further the national interests, but they are often far apart in their interpretations of specific policies of the Adminis- tration. It is quite clear that on this important question honest and able and patriotic men may profoundly disagree. Beard advanced the thesis that two interpretations of the national interest were particularly meaningful in analyzing the basic trends and objectives of American foreign policy. These interpretations he called the Hamiltonian and the Jeffer- sonian. In the concluding paragraph of his book, The Idea of National Interest, he wrote: Evidently, then, the two inherited conceptions of national interest are in the process of fusion and dissolution. A new conception, with a positive core and vii

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