CONFESSIONS OF A NON-USER.

This article points out certain definite limitations on the possible expansion of applications of the opinion research. According to the author, there are surprisingly few operationally significant questions for the policy maker as to which any public opinion exists at all. The overwhelming bulk of these questions are questions of means and not of ends. The fact that different ends would require different means, is of course true but largely irrelevant, since, within the context of the particular decision, the ends are not open to discussion. This is not to say that policy makers or policy advisors are automatons, whose moral judgments are forever in suspension, or that they are not concerned with ultimates, but rather that ultimate questions can only occasionally be reopened for serious examination, otherwise the examination is apt to lose its serious character. There has been a good deal of vague talk currently about substituting a so-called "peace race" for the arms race, which is said to have passed the point of usefulness when the U. S. has developed what is called an "over-kill" capacity. And there is an attempt by various private groups to mobilize public opinion in support of this notion.