To start with this title is to suggest perhaps wherein lies the cause of dispute in the long discussions that have ranged round the meaning and significance of the Jus Gentium; for it is a mistranslation to give law as the English equivalent of the Latin jus. The English translators of the Summa arey not always consistent in their equivalents for the phrase, for in ia. , q. 95, art. 4, in the answer to the first objection (p. 62) the expression Taw of nations’ is given, while in 2a., q. 57, art. 3 (p. 108), it is ‘the right of nations.’ It is this last that is undoubtedly the truer rendering.

The origin of the phrase, however, will help us to understand what exactly jus gentium signifies and perhaps solve it. It seems to be beyond dispute that the term began to be in use in the latter days of the Republic of Rome when the city had begun its conquests of Italy and was holding under its sway peoples for whom it did not legislate, and yet whose quarrels it had to adjust. A special judge had to be given them, the Præstor Peregrinus, whose function it was to settle their disputes, as the Præstor Urbanus settled those of the citizens of Rome. It was found in practice that these foreigners had very many institutions in common, so that gradually a code was evolved which was based upon no positive legislation of any particular city or tribe, but was the mere putting into order of what was found already to have obtained amongst these non-Roman subject peoples.

It is the custom to deride the journalist as a writer of vulgarian English and a debaser of our noble mother tongue. ‘Journalese’ is the contemptuous term often applied to his style in prose. At best his utterances are regarded as sparrow’s twitterings compared with the classic notes of the authentic songsters of literature. Yet everyone reads him, even those who scoff: and numerous scholars, professors and pedants find newspapers a necessity. At his worst the journalist can be very bad; but at his best, he can reach the heights. Our own time, which might easily be labelled the Age of Print, has given the journalist his opportunity. By means of rapid machine-printing he can gain the ears of the world and, if he has something to say and a way of saying it, he can command a hearing and wield an influence that any teacher or preacher might envy.

In the very front rank of the few who have given us journalism at its best is Sir Philip Gibbs. He has had the rare gift of using to the full every opportunity that fortune threw in his way or that his own audacity could snatch. In his latest book, Adventures in Journalism he tells in his vivid and lucid way the experiences of a spectator of the world, an on-looker with a pen swiftly chronicling life’s enterprises, its pageantry, its follies, its humour, its crimes, its wars—all the medley that makes it so complex a patchwork of mad mystery. To have lived amid varied incident and stirring event is one thing : it is quite another to make them living and articulate on a printed page.

In the September issue of Blackfriars we took occasion to point out the fundamental and very serious error of Pere de la Taille’s book, Mysterium Fidei, on the Sacrifice of Calvary. Our last argument against the new theory of Père de la Taille was drawn from the Gospel of St. John. We said: ‘If there is one Evangelist who seems concerned to bring out the fact that Jesus was a priest and that His death was the act of sacrificial redemption, it is St. John . . . Yet St. John does not mention the Last Supper’—which, according to Pere de la Taille, was the ‘unbloody Oblation of the bloody Immolation to be made on Calvary.’ We have therefore felt it might further our readers’ thought if we made a study of St. John’s attitude towards the Sacrifice of Calvary.

Monitor Wyndup swore, he, at least, would avoid swift generalizations when he started on his combined honeymoon and political trip to the Continent. As writer of a remarkable letter on Road .Transport to the Limechester Gazette, he felt called upon to apply his insight to a wider field; and the conditions of South Eastern Europe clearly demanded what light he could throw on their problems. He was not one of those lightning tourists who confound Bucarest and Budapest, or Teschen with Wreschen (the latter being, of course, the Polish name for Warsaw); and he understood that the Balkan and Baltic Republics were to be kept quite distinct. Their fusion, he declared, would endanger the peace of Europe almost as much as the German Reich had done. Now, however, casting a discouraged look at the monotonous chairs and tables of the stereotyped, modern restaurant in the twenty-fourth town he had inspected, he found he was a little too early on the scene to guage things properly.