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The struggle between fascism and communism in Europe has raised the question whether the democracies should passively view this struggle from the sidelines or meet the challenge of aggressive dictatorships even at the risk of war. Spain's experience proves that a policy of non-intervention, unless strictly enforced, plays into the hands of potential war-makers. The pacific nations in their desire to avoid war observe the restrictions, while the dictatorships disregard them. France and Great Britain have sought to justify this policy on the ground that the non-intervention agreement, with all its loopholes, has so far prevented the war from spreading beyond the confines of Spain.

Fascism as a system of power and terror is dead. The black night is over. It is strange, then, that alter the first lift to the spirit which the news of victory in Europe brings, the mind sinks back into the foreboding that has become its habit for more than a decade. Partly it is the realization that the other war in the Pacific must now be brought to its peak of effort. But perhaps it is also that people are unprepared for victory. In the U.S. with the cities unbombed, the shores untouched, the lights cannot appear so bright as to the citizens of London, of Moscow, of Paris.

The article presents information on various socio-political developments. The kind of democracy which the U.S. is trying to sell Europe via the Atlantic Pact was revealed with startling clarity last Saturday when the recently appointed Assistant Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, placed the U.S. squarely in the pro-Franco column and against the U.N. resolution of 1946. In another development the vindication of Miriam Van Waters and her reinstatement as head of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women have ended a case whose implications reached far beyond the question of justice to a devoted public official. Van Waters is one of a handful of progressive penologists directing institutions in the U.S.

The unexpected and decisive victory for woman suffrage in New York is reason for the most heartfelt rejoicing. Democracy has taken a great step forward, all the more gratifying because it has occurred in war time. The Empire State, it was felt, would be the last to surrender. Conservatism, plus the German-American vote, plus the influence wielded by the liquor interests, would, it was believed, make this the last State north of Mason and Dixon's Line to accept this notable reform. But the victory is here, stunning in its surprise, far-reaching in its influence, for it breaks the backbone of the Northern opposition and will have a tremendous effect not only throughout the U.S., but in Europe as well.

The death of the Mikado will evoke no change in Japan's domestic policies or her foreign relations. Mutsuhilto's reign of forty-four years was an era of extraordinary national development, but the Emperor's personal share in the notable historic process was probably not a very important one. An absolute monarch in theory, the Mikado exerted less direct influence upon public affairs than most constitutional rulers of Europe. He did not so much rule through other men as he was used by them. The established native tradition looks upon the Emperor as the source of a spiritual authority which is translated into action by professional statesmen and warriors.

The connection between civil war in China and European imperialism and the responsibility of the British Labor Government for the continued disorder and the suppression of the liberal movement of politician Sun Yat-sen are discussed in this article. British policy in China illustrates some of the difficulties of constitutional as opposed to revolutionary socialism. It is impossible for anyone in England, even the prime minister, to know the truth about any event in China until six weeks after it has happened.

The author says that Japanese have always insisted that the Western nations do not understand the peculiar ways of the East, and that a system of world organization which might keep the peace in Europe and America would not work in the Orient. All Oriental peoples have suffered sufficiently from the white man's imperialism to distrust a system of world organization that appears to give white men continued domination. Fortunately Japan can be destroyed militarily without imposing fresh burdens on Japanese people.

Presents several letters to editor relating to various articles published in the journal. Comments from a reader on the neutrality status of U.S. during the World War; Expression of perplexity regarding war in Europe by a reader; Response from a reader on the state of college teachers compensation.

This article discusses the books "Plot and Counterplot in Central Europe," by M.W. Fodor, and "I Knew Hitler. The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood-Purge," by Kurt G.W. Lüdecke. It is significant that what emerges from Fodor's book is the picture of a new Europe in the making rather than of a dying, suicidal Europe. These plots and counter-plots seem to be the action and pains of rebirth. The antagonism, fascism versus democracy, is not decisive, since both are only different political forms and methods of the same economic order.

It seems difficult to believe now, but the prevalent popular notions about Europe were tinged with an amiable contempt, a kind of carry-over of the laughable experiences of writer Mark Twain with a French barber, such as he describes in "Innocents Abroad." From the then American point of view, European militarism was simply barbarism, a picturesque barbarism, if you wish, but a real barbarism nonetheless. Of course the monarchist, Czarist, and peasant-minded European populations might be expected still to linger in the shadows of superstition-for us, the wide open spaces, two oceans which guaranteed us immunity from invasion, and a free democratic spirit that would never tolerate tyranny or "the man on horseback." The author says that if the war had been a short one as everybody, he then talked with in London either believed, or wanted to believe, those signs might have later been solemnly brought forward by historians as proofs of the fact that the English do not easily become rattled, instead of being cited, as now, as confirmations of obtuseness.

This article focuses on political issues related to the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. Congress, it now seems certain, will recess within a few weeks without having enacted a single piece of labor legislation calculated to improve the status of the wage-earner under the New Deal. Two more European countries have gone fascist. Through a quiet coup on May 16, 1934, the Republic of Latvia passed from the rule of a parliament dominated by social Democrats into that of a dictatorship controlled by wealthy landowners cooperating with fascist organizations.

Ever since the days when he collected stamps and coins the Drifter has had a passion for those infinitesimal relies of feudalism, Liechtenstein and Andorra, Monaco and San Marino, tiny fish in the European sea, which by the trick of fate escaped gobbling by the growing statewhales. Somewhere the Drifter must still have a San Marino sou with which a tourist once stirred his numismatic breast; once he came near enough to Andorra to glimpse its snow-capped peaks from a pass near Ax-les-Thermes; and he warmly recalls the pride with which he told a friend where San Marino was when San Marino with all its army declared war on the Central Powers.

Europe's fight is not merely a negative one -- against Adolf Hitler. The Nazis have taken away the opportunities for individual security inherent in every democracy. The immediate fight against Hitler is for the restoration of those opportunities; in the long run, it is for economic and political security, for the assurance that no man and no group will ever again be permitted to deprive millions of their sustenance. Every statement that has come out of the European underground has called for a post-war world in which there will be jobs for all workers, land for all peasants, and a vote for everyone. Two hundred million Europeans -- with the exception of a small clique of Quislings, traitors, and congenital scoundrels -- are united in the fight. Oppression, visited equally upon everyone, has put everyone on an equal plane -- spiritually, economically, and politically. Everyone to some extent has felt the deleterious effects of hunger. Everyone has seen, or has been subjected to, the ruthless, well-organized methods of the Gestapo.

The facts indicate that the Swedes have turned the coldest of cold shoulders to every invitation to join the "Nordic circle" and have found a way, in the field of the arts, to give an overwhelming vote of confidence to democracy. The German Ministry of Propaganda has spared neither effort nor money to crowd out the cultural influence of the Western democracies. A veritable horde of cultural emissaries---officials, writers, movie stars, university professors--has descended upon Sweden. The atrocities Committed by the Nazis in occupied Europe, especially in neighboring Norway, are publicly condemned from all Swedish pulpits, and congregations are exhorted to pray for their tortured brethren of Israel's tribe.

The real cause of the collapse of democracy in Europe was the lack of courage of the anti-fascists in resisting the blackmail of the right. The right has succeeded until now in manipulating the liberals at its pleasure, and the danger remains that it will succeed again and again. The cynicism of the men of the right is a continuous challenge to the good memory and the common sense of the people. The blackmail of the right has operated until now chiefly in two ways--by accusing those who wanted to resist Hitler of being blood-thirsty warmongers, and by keeping alive the myth of the invincibility of the Nazi armies.

This article presents information on the law and order situation in Siberia under the democratic leadership of admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. It is opined that by recognizing Kolchak's government, Europe will make an irreparable blunder and do immeasurable wrong to the whole Soviet democracy, which is suffering hunger and losing blood, but which will finally survive and not succumb under the heavy trials of the day. One of the reason which is being given for not recognizing Kolchak's said democratic government is: the government was not formed by any responsible groups but was born only after the elimination by force of the committee of members of the all-Russian Constituent Assembly.

The article presents information about socialistic tendencies emerging in the European countries. Socialism has been chiefly a revolutionary and destructive force, there were, it is true, some schools of socialism which professed that society could be peacefully and systematically reorganized, and bad elaborate plans for the happiness and the salvation of the world. These schools are nearly forgotten; few people care nowadays for the doctrines of Saint-Simon, of Fourier, of Considérant. Revolutionary socialism Is a mysterious force, which endangers the political and social fabric of all countries. It has negative rather than positive doctrines; its army is formed of all those who think that they have been robbed of the natural inheritance of man.

On March 12, 1947, the Truman Doctrine was proclaimed in the U.S. The author was in Paris, France at that time. Officials there were deeply perplexed: the declaration might have made sense fifteen days earlier or later, but they could not understand what had prompted American diplomacy to explode it right in the middle of the Foreign Ministers' Conference then in session at Moscow, Soviet Union. Now a year has elapsed and the author attempts to draw up a brief balance sheet as seen from Europe. What was the situation in Europe on the eve of President Harry S. Truman's speech, and what is it today? In March, 1947, the most striking feature of European politics leaving aside Great Britain and some countries in the Soviet sphere where one-party regimes were in power, was the emergence of the coalition government. One element in the coalition was the Communist Party, whose participation in the various Cabinets then seemed logical, even inevitable.