ABSTRACT
Professor George Kennan, Professor Hans Morgenthau, and a number of other writers of the “realist” school of international thought in the United States, have tried since the last war to dispel illusions on this subject among the people of the United States, and to make the idea of balance of power respectable to public opinion. The century from 1815 to 1914 gave ample opportunities to observe the system of balance of power in European practice. The breakdown of international diplomacy in 1914 has led since to intensive studies of the activities of the ministers and diplomats concerned in the negotiations that preceded the war. The “realist” writers in the United States who tend to be sceptical of the value of the United Nations are more interested and experienced in Great Power politics than in the politics of Asia, Latin America, and Africa, which some of them tend to regard mainly as mere complicating factors in the relations of Great Powers.
