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This is a report on how often the British express opinions in terms of the United Nations. It is drawn from a content analysis of the whole of Britain's daily national press during the period from the end of 1945 to the beginning of 1950. The method used was a form of content analysis, theme analysis. Press opinions about the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics amounted to more than 40,000 spread across the four years, that elaborate pretest of the data made possible a "code" of 72 themes, the only politically meaningful assertions made about the two countries by British newspapers or by Britons in their newspapers in any recurrence whatever. In 1954, when, in preparation for the world organization's tenth anniversary and possible revision of the Charter, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is attempting to report on what the peoples of more than 20 countries say and feel about the United Nations, it may be useful to record the inescapable conclusion that to one of the world's most literate peoples, the British, United Nations almost never did and most probably almost never does matter.

The rate of development of theoretical and applied science in a given area is likely to depend on the social utility of understanding the phenomena with which it deals. The beneficiary of this utility is perhaps not the total society but a potent subgroup within it. These methodological advances have been accompanied by elaborations of theories about determinants of the relevant behavior, and the cumulative result has undoubtedly been an advancement of understanding. In this article the author has discussed some classes of determinants of international attitudes which have been suggested in public opinion studies concerning the United Nations. It has also indicated in some cases the sorts of data or research procedures that might shed light on the nature of the relationships which such factors bear to international attitudes. But the author says that it is difficult to subject a non-volunteer respondent to the lengthy assessment procedures required to gain information about unconscious personality processes.

This article reports on student opinions regarding their preferences for the 1956 U.S. Presidential elections. Fourteen studies of voting patterns, conducted from 1940-1952, are summarized and comparatively evaluated in the recent volume, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign, by Bernard Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld and William N. McPhee. In appraising this work and other sources, there appears to be a lack in the reporting of how young adults, primarily of prevoting age, would vote if they could. However, a study of campus opinion on the 1956 Presidential Race, conducted at Cornell University, does give limited insight for such inquiry. The sample for this study consisted of 321 students selected at random from the Cornell University Student Directory for 1956-1957. A telephone survey of the selected respondents was conducted one week before the 1956 election. The analysis involved an evaluation of "what affects voting behavior on the college campus." The results were grouped into 7 categories. Respondents were asked about which factor they personally counted on as the more effective deterrent against war: the hydrogen bomb or the United Nations.

Organized in 1947, the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) provides a focus for persons in all parts of the world who are interested in this area of social science. WAPOR has served not only as a stimulus to a developing profession, but has been instrumental in advancing the ideals of the United Nations, especially through cooperation with UNESCO. In the summer of 1945 the "Public Opinion Quarterly" published an article by the author entitled "A Barometer of International Security". The editor prefaced it as that the United Nations may use a tool the League of Nations never had, public opinion polling. Stuart C. Dodd describes the steps already taken in that direction, the argument for further steps and the possible means of combating the forbidding, falsification, or frustration of the polls by individual countries. Beyond a world association for the polling profession lies the larger goal of developing world polls themselves. While this is expected to go forward along many paths, it has been hoped that some of these ways would eventually merge in a Barometer of World Opinion.

The article presents a review of the United Nations information program by an International Advisory Committee of Experts, which resulted in a number of specific recommendations regarding the quantity and quality of material being disseminated from Lake Success, California. In the early days of the United Nations a Technical Advisory Committee on Information was convened. This body of 13 experts prepared recommendations concerning the policies, functions and organization of the Department of Public Information. An Advisory Committee of Information Experts met with officials of the Department of Public Information to make a study of United Nations information work to date, and to prepare a critique and a set of recommendations. The assembling of this group, composed of 13 experts and 10 consultants, marks a continuation of the United Nations policy of consulting with outstanding media specialists regarding communications problems. The problems confronting the two committees of experts were markedly different, largely due to the progress made by the United Nations after nearly three years operation.

The Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations describes the organization and activities, present and prospective, of the U.N.'s Department of Public Information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than forty "Free" movements and allied members of the United Nations are now competing for the attention and support of public opinion in the U.S. Successful conduct of the war and a determination to establish a fair and lasting peace demand that these foreign propagandas be not at cross-purposes with each other. Propaganda deflation received a vigorous fillip with the publication in the early twenties of "Falsehood in Wartime," a book which is somewhat misleading in that it gives evidence on one side only. This attitude was sustained and stimulated during the "long armistice" period by a spate of books and magazine articles. A group of propagandists very active in the U.S. or rather several groups of varying intensity-would include the various "free" movements. Some represent nations which have been taken over by the Axis by short-of-war methods, others are active in behalf of enemy states, but oppose their present regimes. Baltic propagandists are active in laying plans which they hope will induce the U.S., after the war, to help them achieve and maintain their states' independence.

Propaganda presupposes definition of sound policy, based upon comprehensible knowledge of the facts and of the political, military and economic situation and also of the enemy psychology. When a line of policy has been laid down, actual propaganda operations may be begun, but not before. First of all axioms of propaganda is that only truthful statements be made. Secondly, there must be no conflicting arguments, and this can only be ensured by close cooperation of all propagandists and by strict adherence to the policy defined. The political attitude of the United Nations with respect to Germany is extremely confusing. On the one hand, threats of indiscriminate reprisals and punishment are made. On the other hand, promise after promise is given equally indiscriminately to the "German people," according to which, after the war, no reprisals will be taken by the Allies and Germany will be received as a welcomed member of the commonwealth of nations.