was a conspicuous member of the Fight for Freedom committee, and those who knew Armstrong had little doubt where his sympathies lay. As we shall see in a moment, however, his main activity once the war began in Europe in September 1939 was in another direction.

In the period of the 1930s, the Council itself substantially expanded both its range of publications and its outreach beyond New York City. Beginning in the late 1920s, and regularly through the thirties, the Council published a Political Handbook of the world, compiled primarily by the executive director of this period, Walter Mallory. This gave full current details of governments and key figures throughout the world, and was for many years a leading reference source for journalists and others.

A second important series ofpublications was the institution of immediate annual reviews of the past year, again initiated in the late twenties but brought to new pitch in the thirties. By then, the annual surveys brought out by Chatham House in London, written by the great historian Arnold Toynbee, had achieved special distinction, and the Council's effort was in this general direction. In the early thirties, three of the early annual reviews were written personally by the famous editor and columnist Walter Lippmann, and the task was carried on until it was interrupted by the war.

In the eventful years after the war, these annual reviews, under the title of The United States and World Affairs, were produced extraordinarily rapidly after the end of the year, in parallel with volumes containing key public