Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

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work at Princeton. But his travels had valuable results for the Insti-
tute. Por he was catalyst zmong Ten, and brought to the Institute
through the following years some of the best non-mathematical members
to come to it. He had decided firmly to concentrate his attention on
American foreign relations, and the Director watched helplessly while
the orientation there with the onset of hostilities inevitably became
matters of defence and security. As late as 1938 the Director wrote
Earle that he was advising Professor Mitrany to concentrate in his
studies of international affairs "on the economic side," urging'Earle
to do likewise:
If you and Pfitr2ny can interest yourselves in the econ-
oric aspect of your problem you vill, in my judgment,
not only be on the right track, but you will make a unit
of the School of Econonics and Politics, such as it vill
not be if there.are three tangents. On the other hand,
I do not want to dictate to you or to anybody else what he
shall do.
I have the...feeling that economics vill for the next fifty
or one hundred years furnish the pattern and that political
theory and stat craft vill either enter into that pattern
or shrivel up. 7%
Earle pursued his am way. In 1939-1940 he conducted his first seminar,
bringing to Princeton several European scholars and a number of Ameri-
cans, notably three from Princeton University. In the same year he be-
came Chairman of the An-erican Cormittee for International Studies whose
purpose was to encourage "basic research which is necessary to the
formulation of an intelligent American foreign policy." Beadquarters
would be at the Institute, and Dr. Earle was assisted by a secretary to
the Cormittee who was paid by the Rockefeller Foundation.
\ '. . But Plexner made no secret of his wish to see Professor Earle
'1.
produce another book like The Baghdad Railway, which vas the very highly