With the passing of Don Luigi Sturzo, in the depth of the Roman summer, a presence and a power passed from among us and with its passing brought to a close an era in the history of the Christian spirit.

In memorializing a life so filled with achievement, it is a temptation to fix attention upon action and event. This would be a mistake. It is far more important to fix the image of the person, for it is from the person, as originative center, that the achievement flows. The sentiment which, before all others, the presence of Don Sturzo awakened was awe. Not the awe of invested power of rank and status, of resource and influence, though these he attained in a measure and in a measure spurned. Rather, it was awe of the living and almost limitless spiritual élan which the human person can enclose and a frail body incorporate. This spiritual power was in him a compressed flame, and an unsheathed sword. Inevitably, with time and continued acquaintance, this first sentiment was succeeded by another, which can only be called love. Again, however, not the love of man toward man, strong and ennobling as that might be, but the love which only the charity of Christ, having taken residence in a man, can inspire. For Don Sturzo lived by the charity of Christ alone. It was in him the oil which fed the flame and the hand which unsheathed the sword.

The problem of pluralism in political life causes contemporary man much anguish. Many and varied, difficult and challenging are the peculiar problems posed by the hitherto unrivalled heterogeneity within present-day political life. These problems have to be lived daily by every man at the level of prudence. And they must be continually examined and sifted by social scientists and philosophers. The social scientist must pursue them with his empiriological or phenomena-minded analysis, that is, ananalysis that is primarily concerned with the controlled observation of the facts, and with the formulation of hypothetical generalizations based on presumed facts; the philosopher must pursue them with his ontological or being-minded analysis, that is, an analysis that is primarily concerned with the fundamental principles that must guide the resolution of the problems. Among contemporary philosophers who have grappled with these problems, Jacques Maritain, the distinguished Thomist philosopher, is surely one of the most discerning and illuminating. I wish to consider in this essay some of the main tenets in Maritain's positio vis-á-vis the problem of pluralism in political life, with particular attention to his views on the problem posed by religious pluralism.

To understand social processes in history or today, how far is it useful to think in terms of phases, cycles, or curves of learning or growth? Professional historians have been distinctly cool in answering: “The individual emerges as being more highly conditioned by history than prima facie we had imagined”; there are group forces at work, and the study of these forces can tell us something of what individuals are and are not likely to do. So much can be admitted. But to trace a pattern in the longer processes and wider sweep of events is another matter, and a much more doubtful one.

TenYears after Bismarck's creation of the Reich, a Swabian philosopher, Karl Christian Planck, bitterly regretted in his posthumous Testament of a German, that “our people has now entered, similar therein to the Jewish people, its period of selfish national messianism.” Like an Old Testament prophet, he regarded the German nation-state armed to the teeth as a perversion of the true Germany. “If such a universalist people, situated in the heart of Europe, forms in sharp contrast to its preceding history a centralist nation-state and sets before its neighbor nations an example of increased armament, what can result in an age of acute nationalism but total conflict?” Planck foresaw the war of 1914, but he hoped that out of it a reformation of Germany would come. He was too optimistic; the defeat of 1918 brought no reformation but an intensification of the trends of the Bismarckian Reich. With German scholarship leading the march to the abyss, the gulf between Germany and the West grew wider during the Weimar Reich. Thus the catastrophe of 1933 came about, and this in turn led to the war of 1939. The developments after that war, however, fulfilled Planck's hope for a reformation of Germany, for the rise of a new spirit.

France today is dominated by the overpowering force of the personality of Charles de Gaulle. In his recent address to the Algerian rebels, de Gaulle was not far wrong in his claim, “I am France.” The French people have called upon de Gaulle to solve the political problems of the nation. He has been given an almost unlimited power to use his own discretion in seeking solutions. The results have ranged from a new Algerian policy to the detonation of atom bombs and the visit of Khrushchev. Despite what one may feel about de Gaulle there can be no doubt that he has given new prestige to a mortally sick France.It was for this reason that he was so little content with the existing party structure of France. It is quite easy to criticize these convictions as illusions. But Mounier had no delusions about the Communist Party. And anyone who agrees with him about the capitalist system which he experienced in France can understand the agonizing dilemma in which he was placed. He chose what in his mind was a path between the two horns of that dilemma.

The concepts with which man registers the reality around him and with which he does his thinking carry within them the record of their own history. Thus our ordinary ways of conceiving of the world which lies around and ahead of us, the world of the postnationalist age, seem inevitably to perpetuate the concept of nationalism. To get beyond nationalism, we commonly think of internationalism or postnationalism or transnationalism, conceiving of what is not nationalism in terms of nationalism itself. The difficulty here is of course unavoidable, for the next age will have emerged from nationalism, and our concept of it, too, must perpetuate the realities of history.

The age of the amateur in politics is over according to Dean Acheson. Up until the eighteenth century it was possible, owing to the nature and development of the arts and sciences, for a gifted amateur to hold his own with the experts in many fields, but in the twentieth century the amateur is no longer capable of mastering more highly specialized fields of knowledge. The expansion of knowledge has been so great that no amateur can hope to vie in competence with an expert in a given field. This point of view, while somewhat general and a priori, would arouse little opposition among philosophers and historians of ideas. Congress, according to Acheson, is composed primarily of amateurs, and collectively, it represents the point of view of the untrained and unspecialized. It is an eighteenth-century conception which has survived into the twentieth. If we make Acheson's argument explicit—which he diplomatically declines to do—we get the following: amateurs are not competent to formulate public policy under modern conditions. Congress is a collection of amateurs. Therefore, it follows, that Congress is not competent to formulate public policy. The executive branch, on the other hand, attracts the specialist, depends upon him, and uses him extensively. Congress, because of its situation, that is, its deficiency in specialized knowledge and because of its position as a competing power with the executive, is constantly trying to frustrate the executive. A fundamental problem for American democracy, according to Acheson, is to discover which tasks are suitable for the experts (the executive) and which for the amateurs (Congress) and to facilitate the appropriate performance of each accordingly.

InThe last days of its life, the 85th Congress gave its approval to the joint United States-Euratom research and power reactor program, in the legislation known as the Euratom Cooperation Act of 1958. This law provides that the United States will assist the European Atomic Community in attaining its goal of a total installed capacity of approximately 1 million kilowatts of electricity by December 31, 1963, by bringing into operation power plants using nuclear reactors. In addition, the legislation authorizes an initial appropriation of $3,000,000 for a cooperative research and development program, and provides for sale or lease to the Community of fissionable uranium 235 and one kilogram of plutonium. This law was implemented by the agreement for cooperation containing provisions for financing, which entered into force on February 18, 1959. This legislation marked the high point of American collaboration with the latest institution of the European Community. As such, it is a logical point of departure for recapitulating the current status of that Community and its relations with the United States.

Appraisals of the pontificate of Pope Pius XII have pictured him as a democratic-minded person who did his best to modernize a tradition-bound, authoritarian-minded institution with not completely satisfactory results. In the words of one author, “Pacelli, a modern man set down in a dank maze of dusty dogma, musty custom, dark superstition, and moss-grown standpattism, may very well have done all that one man can do to let in light and air.” Comments of this type are, obviously, mixed compliments, the laudatory references to the late pope and his personal achievements being counterbalanced by less favorable epithets for the Church. It is not the purpose of this article to consider the alleged stand-pattism, dustiness, mustiness, or totalitarian-mindedness of the Church. Its object is to present a study of some of the political teaching of Pius XII, and to inquire whether any of his doctrines are of a modernizing nature and to what extent they “let in light and air.”

The contemporary British Liberal Party sturdily refuses to die. For nearly three decades family allegiances, traditional loyalties, and youthful hopes have preserved for it a dwindling minority status. The Liberals have sought to persuade the electorate with fresh faces and fresh ideas. Still drawing upon the nonconformist tradition they have offered the electorate only a chance to protest and not a possible government. This opportunity to protest against the Leviathan parties, Labour and Conservative, has been a major source of its occasional resurgence in by-elections. The Liberal Party is in many respects the victim of its success. Liberalism, broader than the Party, in pervading British society and parties, could not without drastic alteration become the distinguishing creed of a party. The proponents of change, the sectarian and radical Liberals, were divided, and their estate has been taken over by diverse heirs. Some of the views of Richard Cobden and John Bright became anachronistic, and others were enacted into law which Tories and Labour have preserved. Other elements of radicalism were associated with the Conservative and Labour Parties. Historically the interests attached to the Liberal Party did not cohere well. Even the moments of past liberal greatness, the periods of Gladstone's and Lloyd George's leadership, do not provide a sturdy base of future hope. These inspiring periods, indeed, seem to indicate that to be a dominant national force the Liberal Party requires leaders of unusual and towering genius who strain the bonds of party.

The earliest and most brutal offshoot of Western political absolutism was the colonial imperialism which followed in the wake of Columbus, Magellan, and the other heroes of the Age of Discovery. Characteristically, Western man is wont to regard this epoch as a glorious chapter in his history, as a splendid testimonial to his insatiable quest for knowledge and to his urge to explore the farthest and most remote corners of the planet. But the quest for knowledge and the urge to explore were far from being the only or the most active ingredients in imperialism. Greed, sadism, and lust for power spilled into every corner of the earth whose inhabitants were unable to offer effective resistance to the firearms and cavalry of the new overseers.

In examining man's attitude toward the role of the political regime in his life, one is likely to find the regime an extension of his life — not a force which stands in opposition to it, and certainly not a force which has come to destroy it. The political estrangement, however, between man and his self which is revealed in the Bolshevist dictatorship results in a contradiction between the reality of man and the regime under which he lives. We shall attempt to analyze this contradiction.

The formation of the Irish Home Rule movement was a significant factor in influencing subsequent Irish and British history. Irish Federalism produced a political party that often controlled the balance of power in the House of Commons; split the Liberal party on the question of Irish self-government, a prelude to its eventual collapse; secured extensive agrarian reform for Irish tenant farmers, the first serious blow to traditional property rights in the British Isles; and was instrumental in destroying the political power of the House of Lords.

It is quite well known that South Carolina sent four aristocrats to represent her in the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It is less well known that one of the four merited a listing in Burke's Peerage. In fact, while much has been written about Charles Pinckney, C. C. Pinckney, and John Rutledge, the fourth member of the delegation has been the subject of a few biographical sketches and virtually nothing more. And yet Pierce Butler was not an insignificant member of the delegation or of the Convention. Indeed, several positive claims to fame that can be established in his behalf suggest the need for a more realistic assessment of his role in the 1787 Convention. This paper is designed as a first step in that direction.

Anarchy is rarely or never upheld with consistency. In the pedagogy of Rousseau, there is a set purpose to let the child be guided by natural necessity rather than by human command, and to let him learn from the experience of physical facts rather than by obedience. “Keep the child solely dependent on things; you will have followed the order of Nature in the process of his upbringing. Never oppose to his unreasonable wishes any but physical obstacles or punishments resulting from the actions themselves — he will remember these punishments in similar situations. It is enough to prevent him from doing evil without forbidding him to do it …” (Emile, II). Remarkably, the theory that the method of authority is a poor substitute for the pedagogical power of nature has been accepted, in varying degree of enthusiasm or reluctance, by most schools of pedagogy and has demonstrated lasting power. Yet the authority of parents and tutors is present throughout pedagogical theories, even when it is passed over in silence. Childhood is the domain where the suppression of all authority is obviously impossible. The most radical constructs of anarchy, as soon as they rise above the level of idle rhetoric, admit of qualifications so far at least as the immature part of mankind is concerned. Anti-authoritarian theorists, with few exceptions if any, do not mean that authority should disappear or that it can ever cease to be a factor of major importance in human affairs. What thinkers opposed to authority generally mean is that authority can never be vindicated except by such deficiencies as are found in children, in the feeble-minded, the emotionally unstable, the criminally inclined, the illiterate, and the historically primitive.

European socialists at the beginning of the twentieth century often expressed amazement at the fact that the United States, although one of the most advanced industrial nations in the world, also had one of the weakest socialist movements, as well as a trade union movement bent on avoiding any hard and fast political commitments. Yet, only a few short years before, it appeared as though the American working class had at last arrived at political maturity and was putting its potential voting strength to good advantage. In the elections of 1886, for example, labor tickets in the Northeast and Middle West polled substantial proportions of the vote and won some startling victories. In New York City, Henry George, running with labor and socialist backing, lost out in his race for mayor by only 22,000 votes, while in Chicago and Milwaukee a number of labor candidates swept to victory.

WoodrowWilson continues to arouse remarkably sharp and sustained controversy among those concerned with the recent revival of interest in the problem of ethics in foreign policy. Much of this debate is joined over the apparent antithesis between ethical demands for amicable cooperation among states and a compulsion to adopt antagonistic policies in order to survive in the rough and tumble of international politics. One side in this debate regards Wilson as the exemplar of sane views; the other attacks him as the chief symbol of naive misunderstanding.

Liberalism, and in particular American liberalism, has now achieved the purposes which it set for itself. It has freed men by eliminating the political as dominant in their lives, and by relegating it to the level of supplementary social action. All that is called for now by liberalism's original prescriptions is the maintenance of that freedom. The ancient categories of analysis and action which liberalism worked out, the concept of the struggle of oppressed middle class or downtrodden worker are no longer applicable in the West, and especially not in America. The satisfaction of the social needs of man, as liberalism understood them, is now the reserve of quiet bureaucracies in labor union and corporation headquarters, of clerks and lobbyists, and of lawyers pleading before administrative agencies in Washington, all going about their business largely ignored by those who through dues and contributions provide them livelihood. The political world has been closed off from the ordinary citizen and, in a word, the ills of Western man and, all the more so, of Americans can no longer be translated into political terms.

The title chosen for this paper1 is to some extent misleading. This is not to be another exercise in clearing the history of the 1930's of the myths that encrust it. Professor Toscano, Professor Wiskemann, and Sir Lewis Namier, more senior and more experienced hands than mine have already performed this task for the Axis. It would be presumptuous to attempt to improve on their work.

InSpite of a continued gradual increase of American-Soviet contacts, the official Soviet image of the United States in 1959 was shaped, as before, largely by a combination of preconcert tion and contrivance. The massive Soviet machinery of communication continued to present to the peoples of the Soviet Union a picture of America based less on empirical judgment than on the application to changing circumstances of unchanging attitudes. As in the past, the Kremlin's image of America and of the West in general appeared to be as much an instrument for the manipulation of foreign and Soviet public opinion as it was a reflection of Moscow's appraisal of international political forces. The official doctrine of irreconcilable struggle between Soviet “socialism” and Western “capitalism” held undiminished significance for the rationalization and legitimization of Kremlin power and policy.