Many times I have asked a Philadelphian who complained about this or that specific symptom of his sick city what he was doing about it, to be met with a look of amazement, followed by. "Do anything? Don't be silly - you can't crack that machine. Why, I haven't voted in years!"

I remember seeing - not once but often - a stylish and beautiful woman, furred and smartly gowned, walk her dog in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood. Presently she would wait, leash in hand, smug content on her face, while her doggie dirtied the sidewalk.

She looked to me like the Spirit of Philadelphia.

Let George Do It. Heinrich Hauser, in that amazing attack on the land that sheltered him, The German Talks Back, describes his notion of the typical American as an irresponsible, technically trained ignoramus, and predicts the downfall of this country because, he says, we lack social responsibility. He cites a case in which he claims to have been riding as a passenger in an automobile when his driver, a well-bred young American woman, passed by the injured victim of a hit-and-run driver-this, he says, is typical.

It is no defense to state that the German peasant is even less socially responsible than the American, nor is there much point in asserting that there is a difference between the callous behavior of an individual and the organized, government-directed brutalities of Nazi Germany. The indictment, if true, can destroy us anyhow. Personally, I'll bet ten-to-one on the Good Samaritan behavior of any member of the Doorbell Club, but honesty demands that we admit that there is a measure of truth in what this angry German says.

I know a man who seems to me a case in point. He is native born, well and expensively educated, possessed of a good job, married, and a father. He has both ample time and ample money with which to take an interest in politics-and he takes intense interest.

But interest is all he takes! His activity is limited to an occasional vote.

He is anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-immigrant. He thinks that the public schools should be segregated not only by racial groups but by economic classes, so that his children would not have to brush shoulders with the "lower classes." He is in business but he does not believe in free enterprise; he wants the rules rigged to favor his particular enterprise against free competition from other businessmen. The government to him is "They" and "They" are always doing something he does not like.

"They" have worried him so much that he has at last figured out an answer which pleases him. He believes that the trouble with government is government itself; we should abolish it. Then would come the millenium when men like himself would make their own rules and everybody would live happily ever after, free from the oppression of "They."

I would like to think that he and his kind do not exist in dangerous numbers, but I am not sure. I f the people who hold to the "They" theory are too numerous and the volunteers too few then Heinrich Hauser was right. What the Axis failed to accomplish we will do to ourselves.

Rough Stuff: l would be less than honest if I did not admit that it is sometimes physically dangerous to be a volunteer in politics, even in your own neighborhood.

During my first campaign I took hasty refuge in a polling place until a lawyer from our side came to rescue me, because of a car filled with six thugs who did not like my count-watching activities. I did not feel bold and heroic about the incident; I am somewhat timid. It scared the daylights out of me.

It also surprised and shocked me. The polling place was in a prosperous, super-respectable residential neighborhood; it had never occurred to me that there could be any danger - that sort of thing happened only down near the river. And not to me in any case! I was a respectable citizen!

As a matter of fact it does not happen very often, but it is a hazard you must count on. Later the same day I found that another poll watcher had been less fortunate than myself- beaten about the face and head, left lying on the sidewalk. I myself have never been hurt, but I have had some bad moments, and I have seen permanent scars on more than a few of my colleagues who stood up for their rights. My own city has experienced political bombings at least twice in recent years; there is a former police officer serving time now for one of them.

Even though the danger is comparatively slight, is not this a good enough reason for a decent citizen to stay away from the dirty business?

It all depends on the way you look at it. If it was worthwhile for your son, or your husband, or you yourself, to fight in a foxhole, on the high seas, or in the air, then it is worthwhile to protect the victory by a moderate additional risk. This can be the "moral equivalent of war" the philosophers talk about.

Politicians and Political "Scientists": There is actually no reason why political scientists should not know something about politics and some of them do. I am sorry to say that most of them whom I have met did not; they made sorry fools of themselves the first time they stepped from the classroom into the vulgar hurly-burly. Some of them had basic horse sense, learned from their mistakes, buckled down and became real political scientists. Others did not.

This is not an attack on the late Brain Trust, nor on educated men getting into politics. If there was ever a crying need in any field for trained, intelligent men, imbued with the scientific spirit, that field is government

Unfortunately many of the men who describe themselves as political scientists are neither political nor scientific.

Politics is a tag for the way we get things done, socially; many of them have only an academic knowledge of how we, the American citizens, conduct our affairs.

"Science" is a word with a definite meaning. It refers to a body of organized knowledge derived by a particular method. In brief that method consists of observing specific, individual facts, trying to find relations between them, setting up hypotheses, then checking those hypotheses by observing more pertinent facts. Under this method of investigation all scientific knowledge is founded on field work and laboratory work.

In some fields the basic facts can be observed on the campus, as in physics or chemistry. In others the scientist must regularly go to where his phenomena exist, because they can't be carried to the campus, as in geology and stratospheric research - if he is to learn anything new about his subject and not simply chew over what other men have said.

Is it not obvious that in order to study politics scientifically it is necessary to spend a lot of time where politics is going on?

I have at hand a letter from a friend of mine who is a professional political scientist, with all that years of post-graduate training in one of the most famous schools can give him. However he has had no experience in active politics. He writes:

"Do you think experience or practice in politics essential to an improvement in political interaction? I am a believer in empiricism in most things but believe that much more can be accomplished by scientific methods than by experience in government. That is, I feel that a man might be an effective partisan all his life, but end it with no greater ability to accomplish desirable political changes than in the beginning."

The above paragraph exhibits such complex confusion that I hardly know where to start. Let us begin by conceding that a man may be a very effective field worker in politics and still not do any good in the long run if his work is not enlightened by information and

understanding in current affairs, history, economics, sociology, and many other things. Politics is the broadest of human subjects and we have dealt only with one narrow field of it herein.

But how can a man hope to "accomplish desirable political changes" if he is not experienced in the mechanisms by which political changes are brought about? For that matter will he know a desirable political change when he sees one, unless he has rubbed shoulders with the crowded millions off campus?