SOURCE: "The Fabian Fringe Thinker," in the Times Literary Supplement, No. 4035, July 25, 1980, pp. 837-38.

In the following review of Graham Wallas and the Great Society by Terence H. Qualter, Collini regards Wallas's equivocal influence on modern political science.

Did I remark to you that I am beginning to discover that there is a genuinely English mind? I see that when I talk to Wallas, who is full of real insights, can never concentrate on any subject, never argue about it abstractly, is always driven to the use of concrete illustration, is rarely logical, and about eight times out of ten patently in the right.

Thus Harold Laski in 1920, in one of that endless torrent of breathless letters which made Justice Holmes's old age such hard work. The combination of self-importance and banality in Laski's announcement of his discovery is not very endearing, and those who can now only...