THE HISTORIAN AND THE DIPLOMAT

What is the relationship between scholars and the making of foreign policy? Herbert Feis' essay in this collection of four articles on the subject makes it clear that memoirs and histories of World War One did influence the policy-makers in Washington in the late 'thirties and early 'forties. One particular argument as it arises in the long paper by Francis Loewenheim, that current foreign policy in the spirit of the Truman Doctrine has its origins in the basic elements upon which our country's history was built, is a bid toward the furthering of this relationship. If his bold reading of America's past does not gain him a State Department advisory position, it will at least draw blood from the colleagues of the other schools of interpretation he so readily attacks. Arno J. Mayer's essay on Wilson's role as New Historian and statesman is a tour de force on the book's main theme. But it is in the piece by Louis Mortoo, in which he quite joyfully explicates the Cold War to show how scholars have grown to become a needed part of the mechanism, that the general approach here becomes morbid, even morally repellent. Doctor Guillotine could not have been more proud of his role in the Revolution until his turn came around.