Among the many discussions stirred by recent searchings after the source and substance of a conservative tradition has been that of the place of natural law in the thought of Edmund Burke. One view which has received renewed emphasis is that Burke's natural law is essentially Thomistic. Those who support this view frequently cite Burke's many references to “the law of nations and of nature.” The purpose of this paper is to show, by particular reference to the subject of international law, that it is misleading to place Burke in the older natural law tradition. In ideas as well as in time, he stands more nearly at a mid-point between that tradition and the positivist approach to law. Revelation and the interpretive aid of a Universal Church, which were crucial to the traditional concept of natural law, do not play a similar role in Burke's thought. The same meaning, therefore, cannot be attributed to his references to the natural law.

InTheLight of recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court, it might appear that the judiciary is currently the most radical branch of the Federal Government. In certain respects circumstances today, present a scene similar to that of 1937. The Court, now as then, is denounced as an unelected, undemocratic group which, under the pretense of interpreting the laws and Constitution, makes a law contrary to the will of the majority of the American people. Only today it is the right that denounces the Court and the left that comes to its defense.

Britain's decision in 1955, reaffirmed by policy and action through 1958, to manufacture its own hydrogen bomb has raised important questions about the effectiveness of joint Anglo-American defense arrangements. That the British development of massive retaliatory weapons involved a costly and unnecessary duplication of the American program has been persuasively argued by Henry Kissinger. Like many others, Kissinger would have preferred Britain to have concentrated on the conventional and tactical nuclear means of waging limited war. Indeed, from a joint Anglo-American point of view, Kissinger's argument is so persuasive that an altogether different point of view, much more exclusively national, is required to explain Britain's H-bomb development. This may be discerned in the way in which the policy was presented to the British public. Granting that such presentation does not necessarily reveal the actual motivations of policy-makers, nevertheless the public justifications for Britain's H-bomb illuminate the image which Englishmen have of their nation's status in world affairs, particularly in relation to the United States.

The English word “peasantry” today evokes visions of humble tillers of the soil who dwell in hovels which they share with their families, pigs, goats, and sheep. But translated into German, “peasantry” becomes Bauernschaft, a term which for at least a century and a half has carried an emotional connotation of professional pride. All agrarian producers, whether they cultivate a five-acre plot or a thousand acre estate, belong to the Bauernschaft which sets them off from the rest of the nation. Yet until the end of World War II very distinct class lines existed within the Bauernschaft and divided German farmers into roughly two groups, Gutsbesitzern—(proprietors of estates) and Bauern (peasants). To avoid confusion, “peasantry” will refer hereafter only to the latter, while “farmers” will apply to all German landowners.

Although Dr. Johnson wanted to hear no more of the Punic Wars most of his literate English contemporaries did not agree. Early in the century, to be sure, Thomas Madox found hostility — partly a philosophic revulsion against antiquarian “trash and cinders” and partly a rationalist revolt against the past — to ancient history, and was thereby moved to insist that the knowledge of antiquities could not be impugned without impugning history itself. That this belief had hearty support in succeeding decades is attested by the avid curiosity concerning Herculaneum, the frequent reference in periodicals, and the direct appeal to ancient historians in times of crisis. This “dream of antiquity” changed with the contemporary world. If, at first, archeology—a harmless conversation piece—excited the chief response, threats to liberty, mounting problems of empire, social disorganization, and international anarchy soon drew attention to Greek cities, Hellenistic expansion, and the decline and fall of the Roman Republic and Empire. There was, it is true, but a small harvest of ancient histories, and of these only a few warrant attention. The full measure of devotion must be sought elsewhere: men gained their knowledge of the ancient world not from histories alone but from literature, philosophy, and law.

TheBattleLines in the evolution controversy had been clearly drawn by the year 1890. In scientific circles a few die-hards, like the German zoologist, Virchow, were making a last ditch fight against the increasingly popular Darwinian concept. American scientists, however, were virtually unanimous in their acceptance of evolution now that the restraining hand of Louis Aggassiz had been lifted. Among the theologians too might be found liberals who embraced the new theory; such influential Protestant preachers as Henry Ward Beecher and Lyman Abbott announced that they were “enthusiastic evolutionists.” Most Protestant leaders did not share this enthusiasm. They remained skeptical of evolution's scientific merits, suspicious of its philosophical implications, and fearful of its theological effects. Perhaps the most common Protestant technique was to denounce Darwinism as a threat to Christianity. Thus, as matters stood, America was in the midst of a struggle between a school of evolutionists, many of whom espoused unchristian or antichristian philosophies, and another group of anti-evolutionists who denied the scientific validity of evolution and objected to its theological implications. The evolutionists seemed to be gaining in strength and numbers.