PREFACE

By Honorable Alexander Wiley

_Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee_


To the Members and Committees of the Congress, the Constitution is more
than a revered abstraction; it is an everyday companion and counsellor.
Into it, the Founding Fathers breathed the spirit of life; through every
subsequent generation, that spirit has remained vital.

In more than a century and a half of cataclysmic events, the
Constitution has successfully withstood test after test. No
crisis--foreign or domestic--has impaired its vitality. The system of
checks and balances which it sets up has enabled the growing nation to
adapt itself to every need and at the same time to checkrein every bid
for arbitrary power.

And meantime America itself has evolved dynamically and dramatically.
The humble 13 colonies, carved out of the wilderness in the 18th
Century, emerged in the 20th Century as leader of
earth--industrial--military--political--economic--psychological. Yet the
broad outline of the Supreme Law remains today fundamentally intact.

It is small wonder that W.E. Gladstone described the Constitution as
"the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain
and purpose of man." He knew, as should we, that the Constitution's