Preface

THE purpose of this book, like that of the companion volume to which it is the successor,'* is to describe the evolution of a philosophy of public affairs in general, and foreign affairs in particular.

In the period covered by the earlier volume, the narrative was based, of necessity, on the experiences of the Foreign Service career which had constituted my only professional life over the quarter of a century with which it dealt. The present volume is conceived to include the remaining periods of governmental service: the tours of duty as ambassador in Moscow (1952) and in Yugoslavia (1961-1963), and the circumstances of my retirement from the career service in 1953. I have chosen to carry it no further than 1963, lest what began as memoirs should end as something quite different. Since, however, in the years 1950 to 1963 both the stimuli to thoughts about public problems and the expression of those thoughts had their locus largely in my new life as a scholar and a publicist, I have incorporated some of the experiences of that life as well, wherever they seemed to be of significance for the central theme. I have made no attempt to summarize the outlook to which these various experiences led. To do that would be to depart entirely from the character of memoirs and to undertake a treatise on the

* Memoirs: /j?2j-/p5o. Boston: Atlanric-Littlc, Brown, 1967.

philosophy of poHtics, as I see it today; for it would be quite impossible to separate entirely the views held in 1963 from the outlooks and prejudices of the present day. Some of this philosophy will, I trust, shine through the accounts of episodes now long past; and the various elements of it may — this, at least, is my hope — gain in vividness and force by being presented in the context of the experiences from which they were derived or to which they were related.

G. K. Princeton, Deceviher i^-ji