The following excerpts are from the advance text for the third and final Godkin lecture, delivered Thursday night by Chester Bowles. Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Chester Bowles, American Politics in a Revolutionary World, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright, 1956, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

III

The Fourth Consensus?

I have sketched a general view of American political growth, and examined in some detail the application of that view to the most recent period of our history. Let us now consider its implications for the future.

Let me emphasize again that I make no claim for the exclusive truth of this approach. Yet it seems to me especially useful for the light it throws on the problems and frustrations of the intelligent citizen in contemporary politics, whether he is a Democrat or a Republican and whether he considers himself a liberal or a conservative.

Spread of Apathy

To note the spread of political apathy and to lament it has become commonplace. This lack of deeply felt political commitment reflects to a large degree, I believe, the broad areas of agreement on major issues, which we have just examined. The more fully we recognize and accept that consensus, the more difficult it is to tackle the remaining differences with the zeal and the energy which our democratic tradition seems to demand.

During the presidential campaign of 1956, in the area of domestic policy both parties will undoubtedly support with every evidence of enthusiasm a federal school aid program, a federal highway program, expended social security, further slum clearance, a balanced budget, adequate military defense, the wise development of our natural resources, civil rights, and improved assistance for our farmers. They will disagree at least, only on the magnitude of these programs, the speed with which they are implemented, and the manner of their administration.

Strange Preoccupation

Some highly important questions will be involved here on which many of us hold strong opinions. But in the large prespective of history, our preoccupation with these issues in the crucial year 1956 may seem even more strange than the forgotten arguments that divided us in the election of 1928, when the nation was balanced unwrittingly on the verge of economic collapse and the parties stood on the brink of a political revolution.

There is little doubt that lurking some-where outside the present area of political consensus are perhaps the most formidable questions in the history of man, questions involving not only the nature of life on this earth, but even its continued existence. A brief review of the forces which are now formulating these questions suggests the scope of the challenge:

In a single decade the nationalist wave in Asia and Africa has created sixteen newly independent nations, with a total population of more than 700 million people, one third of mankind.

In Africa, the last colonial areas under European control are sorely troubled with political unrest and racial tension.

China, with its population of 580 million and its long and friendly tradition towards America, has emerged under a communist government from generations of apathy and impotence to become the primary political and military force in Asia.

The Soviet Union has emerged as the world's second industrial power, the originator of a new concept of rapid capital formation which may be ideally suited to the underdeveloped two thirds of the earth, and the generation and directing force in a powerful politico-military combination which looks on the United States as its adversary.