After a year of wartime publishing and a shift in policy, the editors of "Threshold" have decided to devote all of one issue to a single type of subject matter. In terms of the magazine's own credo, its latest number is concerned with the shape of "the new world order." Under that rubric the organ of International Student Service has gathered both one of the finest and one of the poorest articles it has ever printed.

Leading the issue is Harold J. Laski's devastating criticism of the complacent "leave-it-until-we-win" school of thought. "The eminent English political scientist pulls no punches in charging that American and British Tories have a static conception of victory. Laski holds that the Nazi revolution can be permanently defeated only by stronger revolutionary idea, and that the promise of an economy of plenty is the only truly revolutionary concept which the United States has to offer. Plenty, however, is to Professor Laski manifestly impossible in a set of economic institutions best fitted to profit-yielding scarcity. Changing those institutions by consent instead of violence is possible when men's minds are accustomed to great transformations, but will be infinitely more difficult when post-war inertia and fatigue set in. This analysis of the conservative mind exemplifies magnificently the value of the Marxian approach when it is applied coolly rather than with emotionally supercharged hysteria.

None of "Threshold's" other articles reaches the standard of Professor Laski's contribution. Next in rank stands Joseph P. Lash's "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," as estimate of the role of this war's veterans in future national politics. Lash concludes that soldiers' ideas are basically reflections of those of the nation as a whole, and that the only permanent influence of military service will be stronger attitudes of cooperation and respect for other peoples and races. Neither of these attitudes, however, belongs exclusively either to New Dealers or Old Guardsmen, and forecasting concrete political beliefs on the basis of such concepts is risky at best.

Marna Angell's, "Agenda for Victory" falls far below the publication's usual calibre. She assumes that repeal of the poll tax will "assure" more progressive Congressmen from the South, and that labor-management committees will endure unchallenged after the war. Similar unsupported statements scattered through her essay rob it of any real value.

As usual, the issue includes two short stories and a few poems. Just why they are included is not clear. They certainly provide no relief or entertainment, for they are morbid at best and maudlin at worst.