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Naturalization procedure is a complex process involving a dozen different steps from the time the alien enters the country until he finally receives his order of admission from the court. In recent months, considerable attention has been given it in the hope that part of the red tape and resulting delay may be obviated. Criticism of red tape and useless steps in the procedure has been widespread. As a student of the administrative process, I tried, during my period of service in the Department of Justice, to devote as much time as possible to improvement and simplification of naturalization, and in this I was encouraged by the Attorney General and other officials of the Department. In my treatment of this subject, the analysis and recommendations are primarily the result of my own thinking and analysis, but it can also be said that on the general approach, all of us in the Department who were concerned with this problem saw eye to eye. In the study of administrative procedure and the determination upon improvements, we in Washington have been greatly assisted by the administrative studies of the National Council on Naturalization and Citizenship.Before we can deal intelligently with administrative analyses and recommendations, we must make up our minds as to the results we are trying to achieve. I am one of those who think that administration cannot be intelligently considered apart from the social problems and objectives which it subserves; for if it is so considered, it is almost sure to fall wide of the mark. What kind of citizenship are we interested in producing? Some of the most important administrative determinations to be made depend upon the answer given to this question.

Nothing is of greater importance to national defense than the morale of those who do the actual work, the men who pump the petroleum, roll the steel, build the ships and planes. An ounce more of spirit along the assembly line is worth more than a correspondingly higher percentage of armaments in a clash of troops. This is because modern wars are won by industrial strength, a fact that we are almost tired of hearing repeated, but the truth of which we are observing with every passing month of the present war.War industries require raw materials, trained leadership, and sufficient funds to support the costly effort. A nation needs all of these. But all depend for their success upon the efficiency and ardor of designers, foundrymen, and machinists. Do they put their minds and backs and hearts into their work? Or do they merely go through the motions?Organized labor may be fitted into a war economy in one of several ways. The workers can be virtually enslaved, as in Poland, and forced to labor with armed sentries standing over them. This method has never proved very efficient. Another way, which Hitler and Mussolini are using, is to appeal to the emotions of patriotism, to work men into a frenzy which must then be sustained.

AbstractA review of eleven essays prepared by management experts both in this country and abroad.

It is now fifty years since Woodrow Wilson wrote his brilliant essay on public administration. It is a good essay to reread every so often; there is so much in it that sounds modern, so much that will hold permanently true. "It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one." Was this said only yesterday? No, Woodrow Wilson clearly saw the importance of governmental administration half a century ago. "Administration is the most obvious part of government; it is government in action; it is the executive, the operative, the most visible side of government, and is of course as old as government itself." Yet democracies have badly neglected administrative principles and structural improvements. "Like a lusty child, government with us has expanded in nature and grown great in stature, but has also become awkward in movement. … English and American political history has been a history, not of administrative development, but of legislative oversight—not of progress in governmental organization, but of advance in law-making and political criticism. … We go on criticising when we ought to be creating."