The Domestic Temper

THE VERY SUMMER which finds the Russian and American governments drawing closer together seems also to find the Russian and American people approximating one another, so far as one can tell, in the quality of their mood. Both give the impression of hopeful, tolerant, bemused docility, innocent of critical insight, free of fundamental doubts, devoid of positive convictions.

This similarity of mood should not come as a surprise when we consider that in some ways the two peoples have been...