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The article explores the relation of public opinion to political leadership and foreign policy with reference to the history of Napoleon Bonaparte III. The author says that by the experience in the presidential election of 1948 in the United states people see how difficult it to ascertain current public opinion. How much more difficult must it be, then, for an historian to determine what was opinion 83 years ago in the French Second Empire three thousand miles away. The foreign policy of the Second Empire was an equally dangerous field for the press to enter. The published and unpublished dispatches of the foreign diplomatic representatives in Paris, France are also of some value on opinion. They were as anxious as was the emperor to discern trends of opinion on foreign affairs, and they were in contact with the best informed people in Paris. The critical situation in 1866 revolved around events in central Europe among the German states and the serious disturbance of the European balance of power which such events might bring about.

The prospect that opinion surveys may be able to assist the peoples of different countries to communicate with and to understand each other is one that has fired the imaginations of many students of public opinion. It is generally acknowledged, however, that this goal is as difficult so achieve, as it is inspiring to contemplate. The symposium discusses some of the methodological problems which arose when research firm Elmo Roper and the periodical "Time" attempted to obtain comparable data simultaneously in ten countries. With developments after World War II, the problem of measuring public opinion cross-culturally has reached urgent dimensions. For an essential of lasting international understanding is full and accurate knowledge of what the people in partner countries think. It is regrettable that the methodology needed for accurate appraisal of international opinion remains largely to be developed. In the execution of a polling operation covering several countries a great many difficulties arise which do not usually occur in studies done in one single country. The points taken up in this article are some of the hurdles encountered in coordinating studies in four European countries namely Sweden, France, Switzerland and Italy, in the Time survey. It should not necessarily be assumed that any of the solutions the surveyors decided to use could be considered as permanent. The purpose of this report is merely to point out some of the problems and to promote discussion on the ways to overcome them. Three difficulties mentioned in this article are: a clear description of the universe with which the surveys deal, the problems of translation of questionnaires, and the element of timing.

Though called a world war, the war of 1914-18 was, largely a European conflict which due to the increasingly intricate inter-relationships of modem life had repercussions far beyond its actual locale. While offering an unmistakable indication that in all spheres of man's activity an event occurring in any part of the world has a greater or lesser effect upon all other parts, that war was yet essentially a provincial war compared to the global conflict in which Alaska and Madagascar, Hunan province and Dakar, the Solomon Islands and the Caucasus, Norway and the Caribbean Sea are locked in the intricate maze of grand strategy. Upon students of history the effect of the earlier conflict was for the most part restricted to a search after causes or origins. The aim varied from that of placing the blame upon one nation or group of nations to the more philosophical effort to relate the already generally accepted concepts of nineteenth century history, industrialism, imperialism, nationalism, democracy, etc., into some pattern such that the inevitable result would appear to be the conflict which followed.