A new year seems a propitious time to survey the international scene, and thus VQR's first issue of 1978 contains three articles dealing, respectively, with the future role of U.S. diplomacy, detente, and Scotch-Welsh nationalism.

America's place in history and its international role in the 21st century may depend less on what futurologists foresee and more on the lessons to be learned from recent diplomatic practice and the philosophies underlying relations with the rest of the world, especially the Third World of the Southern Hemisphere. Kenneth W. Thompson, Commonwealth Professor of Government and International Affairs at the University of Virginia, is eminently qualified to examine the role of diplomacy in our third century of freedom. As vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation during the 1960's and early 1970's, he was concerned primarily with the foundation's educational programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has combined this on-going interest in the Third World with an equal interest in the moral dimensions of American foreign policy.