Foundations of National Power; Readings on World Politics and American Security / edited with introductions and originaln text by Harold and Marget Sprout

The first edition of Foundations of National Power was prepared during the closing phase of the second world war. When the book went to press in the spring of 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States were allies in a common cause. Victorious armies from the East and from the West were overrunning a wrecked and prostrate Germany. The San Francisco Conference had just put the finishing touches on the United Nations Charter. The war in the Pacific was hurrying to a climax. With remarkably few exceptions, policy-makers and private citizens behaved as if they really believed that Moscow and the West could cooperate not only in war but also in peace.

The "Introduction" to the first edition was written in late August, 1945, a few days after two atomic bombs had razed the cities of Hiro shima and Nagasaki, killing 100,000 persons, injuring another 100,000, and destroying or damaging several square miles of industrial and resi dential buildings and other works of man. A few paragraphs from that "Introduction" may help to recall some of the facts and impressions, conclusions and expectations, hopes and fears that were current during those days of 1945.

"The second world war," we wrote, "has profoundly altered the relations of the United States with other nations. Venerable foreign policies such as neutrality towards European wars and avoidance of military alliances with foreign powers-require fresh appraisal in the light of changing conditions. We may court disasters more terrible than those which have befallen Germany and Japan if, as in 1919, we turn our backs on the Old World and try to go about our business as if the war had never occurred.