THROUGHOUT the 20th century, the United States has pursued two diverging goals in foreign policy. On the one hand it has sought stability and the status quo, and on the other it has sought, in Wilson's words, to "make the world safe for democracy," This search for an orderly yet democratic and free world has long concerned Norman A. Graebner, Edward R. Stettinius Professor of Modern American History at the University of Virginia. "I early developed the thesis that in any successful foreign policy there must be a close association of ends 'and means," Mr. Graebner writes. "It is my belief that a nation's foreign policy cannot operate effectively beyond the range of its clearly perceived interests. Even against a rather minor enemy, the absence of clearly demonstrated interests in Southeast Asia doomed American policy there from the very beginning." Mr. Graebner is on leave from Virginia this year at Pennsylvania State University, directing what he considers to be "a very successful program on the Bicentennial under the general theme of Freedom: Then, Now, and Tomorrow." In his 25-year teaching career, Mr. Ghaebner has taught at Ohio State University, Stanford University, and the University of Illinois. His books include Empire on the Pacific, The New Isolationism, Cold War Diplomacy, and Ideas and Diplomacy.

Thomas Wolfe has never really been accepted as part of the Southern literary establishment. Yet, as Louis D. Rubin, Jr. notes, Wolfe was as much a part of the South as the Great Smokies and piney woods of his native North Carolina. Mr. Rubin is University Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His latest book, William Elliott Shoots a Bear: Essays on the Southern Literary Imagination, has just been published by Louisiana State University Press. He is the author and editor of numerous other books, including The Faraway County, Writers of the Modern South, The Golden Weather: A Novel, The Writer in the South: Studies in a Literary Community, and Southern Renaissance: The Literature of the Modern South.