ItIs A well-known human tendency to continue applying remedies after the problem for which they are suitable has been solved. Concentration on a particular difficulty becomes habitual to such a degree that its disappearance may not be immediately realized. And new problems may take its place for some time without being noticed.

When Jonathan Swift described the episode of Laputa in his Gulliver's Travels his genius for satire took on a prophetic dimension. The Laputans were a strange race of men — a star-gazing, introspective people who decorated their clothing with emblems of the sun, moon, stars, and various musical instruments and served their food in fancy geometrical patterns. They devoted their time to the study of mathematics, astronomy and other subjects devoid of concrete claims and when in public were always accompanied by “flappers” to call them back from the far reaches of abstraction and impracticality. Swift employed great imagination and rich wealth of detail in heaping contempt upon the abstract mind.

RecentReports reach us from England that a notable element in support of the cause of Cardinal Newman's canonization is the unusual extent of American devotion to him and to his thought. Certainly the name of Newman is great among us. Most American Catholic thinkers would agree with Otto Karrer, writing in April, 1947, for The Review of Politics on Newman and the spiritual crisis of the Occident, that Newman is probably “the most illustrious religious mind in the modern Anglo-Saxon world.” It is clear that he is the truly great eminence at the start of the Catholic intellectual renascence of the past hundred years. In our devotion to him and in our praise of him as a foremost thinker in the Church, it is well to consider what is the justification for the esteem in which we hold him.

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.

InTheYears following the second World War, Western diplomacy was confronted with staggering problems. Some of these have been results of long developments, others of more recent origin. Meetings between Mussolini and Hitler and between the dictators and Western statesmen are glaring examples of a new brand of diplomacy which was characterized by lack of preparation through traditional diplomatic channels. Subsequent events disclosed not only some weaknesses of democracies in international politics but exposed even more the lack of good faith and other destructive tendencies of totalitarian diplomacies. Not only did Western foreign policy fail to answer adequately the challenges of a crumbling world order, but totalitarian diplomacy also erred often and gravely. Mussolini's diplomatic mistakes caused the doom of Fascist Italy and Hitler's blunders contributed greatly to the destruction of Nazi Germany. The Nazi-Soviet deal and Stalin's overextended faith in Hitler are prize examples of diplomatic miscalculations.

TheRetreat from liberalism and the rise of fascist totalitarianisms in the interwar period occasioned widespread inquiry into the intellectual sources of the phenomenon. Writers have frequently discovered the “roots,” to use the fashionable metaphor, in romanticism, particularly, German romanticism. Sharp controversies have arisen over the propriety and validity of attributing modern political lunacy ultimately to the romantic mind. A prior question may well be asked, what exactly are the elements of romantic thought which have political significance. This paper seeks to identify and analyze these elements.

In contemporary America institutional religion — the great religious bodies, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish — grows with a vigor equalled only in the early decades of the nineteenth century. In the last two decades church membership has increased at a ratio twice that of the rapidly accelerating population. Nearly every American affirms that he is a Protestant, Catholic, or Jew while three out of every five are actually members of one of the more than two hundred denominations which dot the religious landscape. In a period marked by economic depression, global war, and efforts to contain Communist totalitarianism, Americans look to religion as a major defense of democracy and the “American way of life.”

IfHeThought about it at all, Thomas Hutchinson1 must have realized that he became governor of Massachusetts in 1771 by ignoring the old rules and abiding by a new set of his own. The four previous incumbents — he had served under them all in one capacity or another — had relied on influence or a family connection or plain luck. None of these alternatives was open to Hutchinson. In his grammar of politics the principle items were things like positions, service, and point of view. None of these might have meant anything without a fourth element: desire. Hutchinson had that, too.

AllOfUs who have considered the problem of enjoying contemporary art are aware that the most serious barriers to it are the reluctance on the part of many painters and sculptors to put aside the notion that a work of art must mirror the physical world about us and their unwillingness to accept the fact that all true art must go “through the looking glass” — that is beyond the mirror.

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.

ToUnderstand the limited accomplishment of American Catholic intellectual activities in the second half of the twentieth century it is not sufficient to examine the immediate antecedents. The American Catholic history since the beginning of the first World War has, indeed, witnessed important efforts to raise Catholic intellectual activities to the level of traditional European Catholic culture, but these efforts have been handicapped by a bad starting point. The absence of similar efforts during the decades preceding World War I — a period in which Catholic intellectual activities were seriously out of step with the intellectual development of the United States — has much to do with the present mediocre status of Catholic intellectual activities and accomplishments. Unfortunately, the period in Catholic history between the Americanist controversy and the formation of the National Catholic War Council in 1917 has not been seriously studied and consequently its effect on subsequent American life is not fully understood.

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.

Few historical challenges are so tantalizing as the attempt to account for the crushing blows which descended in ever-mounting crescendo upon the Catholic Church during the first century of Independence in Central and South America, regions where the population had been and remained close to 100 percent Catholic. The present study must begin by braving this challenge so as to place its subject matter in proper perspective.

Students of American political theory find themselves in general agreement concerning the character and significance of their most celebrated document, The Federalist. Few deny that this series of essays in support of the Constitution by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay represents a substantial contribution to the literature of political theory. The nature of the contribution is also well established. The Federalist, it is agreed, is a skillful exposition of the principles of constitutional republicanism — an exposition not haphazard or fanciful, but controlled by constant reference to the capacities and limitations of the political animal. The latter point is often emphasized; Benjamin F. Wright states: “The aspect of The Federalist which is of universal applicability is … its recognition of the importance of human nature in politics, togetherwith its remarkably penetrating analysis of the motives and the behavior of men in a free society.” x Finally, there is agreement on the general outlines of this theory of human nature. The authors of The Federalist, it is said, were decidedly “realistic,” brooking no illusions of the inherent goodness or rationality of man, but holding firm to “a conception of human corruptibility.” 2 The adjective most often employed is “pessimistic.”

FrenchSocialism has suffered from ideological uncertainty for seventy-five years. Although the party has not been a disassociated, irresponsible cult, it has never had sufficient popular support to implement its ideals by democratic action. Now, in the Fifth Republic, such a prospect seems more remote than ever. More than fifty years as a single, organized party has only led to frustration, marked in the last instance by a schism over support of General de Gaulle. Why has this happened?

A Distinguished contemporary historian of eighteenthcentury Ireland has observed that “the early history of the Volunteers has never been written.” This is not to say that the Volunteers have not been written about, for no subject has urged Irish pens to greater industry than have the Volunteers. Yet, during the past one hundred and fifty years historians of each generation have been content for the most part to rely upon the research and repeat the generalizations of the previous generation. Consequently, the circumstances surrounding the raising of independent companies in Belfast and the reasons for the spread of that institution over the rest of Ireland in 1778–79 remain obscured and confused.

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.

WithinTheLast decade, the United Nations has undergone three modifications which, taken separately, are quite significant; together, they represent a true metagenesis of the Organization.

The first modification paralleled a development which had occurred in the League of Nations: both organizations were designed to be led, if not controlled, by the powerful members permanently seated in the League's Council and the United Nations' Security Council. In both organizations, however, the less powerful member states, in spite of the constitutional provisions, have persisted in endeavoring to assert themselves and have sought in numbers a balance to, and — whenever feasible — a substitute for, the authority lodged with the few strongest nations. The ultimate acquisition of prestige by the Assembly of the League of Nations was their success.

In current ethical theory we have been getting two second-order phenomena, each a rebound from a first-order phenomenon.

The first-order phenomena, though with partly the same prompting, come from totally different fields and are miles apart. Even so, a main point of this paper is that the sets of second-order phenomena, rebounding from widely different data, may be tending to converge and, taken radically, may be saying the same thing.