Book Reviews : Six Allies and a Neutral. By LLOYD A. FREE. (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1959. Pp. xiii, 210. $5.00.)

• Published date: 01 June 1960
• Date: 01 June 1960
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591296001300216
• Subject Matter: Articles

520

BOOK

REVIEWS

Six

Allies

and

a

Neutral.

By

LLOYD

A.

FREE.

(Glencoe:

The

Free

Press,

1959.

Pp.

xiii,

210.

$5.00.)

In

this

unique

book,

social

psychology,

the

most

recent

handmaiden

of

political

science,

is

utilized

to

discover

the

foreign

policy

attitudes

of

officials

in

the

legislative

field

and

of

informed

persons

having

a

specialized

but

not

profes-

sional

knowledge

of

foreign

relations

within

six

members

of

the

Grand

Alliance,

liberally

interpreted,

and

one

neutral

state.

The

Institute

for

International

Social

Research

organized

and

supervised

the

testing

project.

Its

national

applications

were

committed

to

local

public

opinion

organizations

within

each

country

in-

cluded

in

the

arrangement.

In

addition

to

the

legislators

and

leaders

of

the

political

elites,

the

views

of

some

foreign

informants

in

each

country

were

sampled.

The

legislative

bodies

whose

members

were

consulted

were

the

two

houses

in

the

United

States,

Italy,

France,

and

Japan.

The

House

of

Commons

in

the

United

Kingdom,

the

Bundestag

in

West

Germany,

and

the

Lok

Sabha

(House

of

the

People)

in

India

were

the

bodies

in

the

states

where

the

upper

chambers

were

omitted.

The

legislative

bodies

included

in

the

study,

and

the

local

opinion

organizations

conducting

each

inquiry

on

the

national

level

are

well

known

to

this

reviewer.

The

research

is

represented

as

&dquo;something

of

a

pioneering

venture,&dquo;

and

that

this

sort

of

inquiry

has

not

hitherto

been

conducted.

There

is

every

reason

to

believe

that

the

testing

was

conducted

with

scientific

precision

and

statistical

accuracy.

The

countries

selected

were

India,

Japan,

Great

Britain,

France,

Italy,

Ger-

many,

and

the

United

States.

This

selection,

while

obvious,

was

a

fruitful

one.

It

included

the

five

principal

allies

of

the

West,

plus

their

leading

Asian

associate

(Japan)

and

the

leading

neutral

(India),

which

stands

in

between

the

allies

of

the

Western

and

Soviet

spheres,

and

which,

until

the

recent

Tibetan

and

Kash-

mir

border

difficulties

with

Communist

China,

appeared

to

be

the

battleground

for

the

mastery

of

the

uncommitted

world.

The

relations

of

these

states

afforded

a

rich

field

for

foreign

policy

investigation.

In

an

opening

chapter,

entitled

&dquo;The

Spectrum,&dquo;

the

author

attempts

a

new

definition

of

&dquo;Neutrality,&dquo;

and

discusses

some

of

the

factors

basic

to

his

study,

such

as

&dquo;involvement

and

non-involvement,&dquo;

&dquo;degrees

of

commitment,&dquo;

and

&dquo;

’reality

worlds’

and

foreign

policy.&dquo;

He

expressly

rejects

the

concepts

of

&dquo;na-

tional

interest,&dquo;

&dquo;national

interests,&dquo;

and

&dquo;national

security&dquo;

usually

set

forth

by

foreign

offices

for

the

&dquo;reality

world&dquo;

of

the

individual.

While

the

author

could

command

support

for

the

unsatisfactory

basis

of

the

rejected

concepts

named

above,

he

does

not

make

abundantly

clear

what

he

means

by

the

concept

he

has

embraced.

Any

test

which

is

traditional

or

official

seems

to

be

bad.

In

the

breakdown

of

studies

within

each

country,

it

must

be

remembered

that

different

research bodies

carried

on

each

national

research

project.

Co-

ordination

and

integration,

therefore,

were

manifestly

difficult,

and

subject

to

constant

error.

And

there

were

difficulties,

of

course,

in

the

pursuit

of

each

local

inquiry.