There are basically two types of process leading to the large-scale liberation of the energy locked in the nucleus of the atom: fission and fusion or, more simply, breaking up large nuclei and sticking together small ones. In the fission process, a nucleus of uranium or plutonium breaks up into two approximately equal parts, with emission of energy. A few neutrons are also emitted, and these can cause more fissions in the surrounding material, thus maintaining the reaction. Energy is also released if two nuclei of very light elements like hydrogen or helium coalesce; this is called fusion. This process will only take place if the combining nuclei have sufficient energy to overcome the powerful electrical repulsion tending to keep them apart, and this means that the hydrogen has to be at a very high temperature before the reaction will begin. The required temperature is many hundred of times greater than the highest attainable by purely chemical means but it can be produced by a nuclear fission reaction. A fission bomb is therefore used to detonate a surrounding mass of hydrogen. The resulting thermonuclear reaction, as it is called, is self-propagating until the reacting mass is blown apart by the force of the explosion.

It is usual to express the power of a nuclear bomb in terms of the weight of T.N.T. that releases the same amount of energy. The fission bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were equivalent to about 20,000 tons of T.N.T. and since then fission bombs of up to about twenty-five times this power have been developed, together with a wide range of smaller weapons for tactical use.

Poetry and diplomacy are so rarely allied that there is the possibility of overlooking the fact that the great poet who has just died was also a distinguished diplomatist, ambassador at one time in Tokyo and at another in Washington, where he negotiated the Kellogg-Briand pact. This leading of a full life in the world of practical affairs and the simultaneous creation of an immense body of poetry, mystical in inspiration, denotes, not a dichotomy, but indeed a rare harmony. Claudel was not a poet who had strayed by chance or mischance into the diplomatic service; neither was he a professional diplomatist who wrote verse as a relaxation from official memoranda. He was at one and the same time a diplomatist by choice, rising through the various grades of consular service to ambassadorial status, and a poet from whose God-centred vision nothing human was alien. What influence his poetic genius may have had on his diplomatic activity one does not know, but it is clear that his poetry was enriched by the fulness of his human experience. It is rare nowadays for a poet to be a man taking full joy in all that is human, for whom the material world is a thing of beauty, yet who recognizes that the loveliness of God’s creation is but a foretaste of the absolute beauty which is in God. As he writes in his poem on St Teresa:

Of all the developments that have taken place in Wales since the end of the war, perhaps those most vital to the life of the nation are the efforts now being made to preserve and extend the use of the Welsh language. Until recent years it was taken for granted that the language was such an integral part of the average Welshman’s being as never to be in serious danger, and this in spite of the early defection of whole counties like Radnor and Monmouth and of parts of several others. Now, however, with the immigration which started with the war we find people of English and other nationalities settled not only in the towns and villages but even in farms and homesteads in the remotest parts of the country. In my own village, for example, fifty per cent of the children attending the village school are of English parentage and many of the farms in the valley have been bought by English people. In former days such immigrants were rapidly absorbed into the native population and soon became Welsh both in speech and outlook. Occasionally that still happens, but the trickle of immigration has become a flood and the process of absorption is in danger of being put into reverse. Added to this, there is the influence of television, the wireless, English newspapers and magazines and, by no means least, the increase of rapid transport to cities and resorts, most of which have long been anglicized.

At long last the educational work of the religious Orders in the modern world is coining into focus. The days are gone when, for example, one still had to depend, for the educational pioneering of St Augustine, upon contemporary and sub-contemporary Lives. With the rise of research-schools in Education in our modern Universities the ‘field-work’ on original documents is being done, for Order after Order. Some of these dissertations, notably that of Dr Mary O’Leary on the Society of the Sacred Heart, have been published. Others, such as the monographs by Mother Mary Philip on Mary Ward, Fr Patrick Walsh on the Society of African Missions, or Mother M. Dominic on the schools of the Assumptionist Nuns, are to be seen only in the libraries of the Orders or of the Universities for which they were written. As time goes on and the field-studies multiply, a coherent picture of modem Catholic education will at last emerge. It is very much to be hoped that the present Lasallian celebrations will stimulate in other fields the trained research students without whom the full picture will never be possible.

It is remarkable that, until only a few years ago, the work of so outstanding a pioneer as St John Baptist De La Salle himself, which is being commemorated in London this month, on the occasion of the centenary of his Institute’s arrival in England, was known only through such tributes as the standard historians of education had been able to cull from the pious but undiscriminating early biographies. The life of De La Salle by Blain was for generations the source.

The fourth article of the creed, ‘Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried’, summarizes the events in our Lord’s Passion. It is important in considering this article to remember the general interpretation given in the Scriptures to these events. It is this interpretation that directs the awareness in faith of the significance of the events. The dramatic force of the story is so great on its human level that it can sweep us away into a jungle of feeling and emotion which has little theological character, unless it be recalled by a constant reiteration of the dogmatic values involved.

In the accounts given in the Synoptic Gospels of the baptism of Jesus, there is a strong implicit reference to the prophecy of Isaias about the suffering servant of God. This servant is the elect, in whom God delights, the one who is despised, and the most abject of men; who bears their sorrows and infirmities, ‘since he was wounded for our iniquities; he was bruised for our sins’ (Is. 53, 1-7). He, says the prophet, is to be led ‘as a sheep to the slaughter and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer’. St John’s Gospel makes the reference explicit. ‘The next day, John saw Jesus coming to him; and he saith “Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who taketh away the sins of the world.” ‘ (John 1, 24). All the Gospels then introduce Christ, at the beginning of his ministry, not only as the Messias, but also as the suffering servant (pais).