IT is for man that education must exist. Such a statement may seem too obvious to make at all. Yet its meaning is rarely understood today. Too many contemporary educators fail to recognize the central point of man in the educative process. There is lavish talk of education for the masses, education for today, education for tomorrow, education for democracy, education for business, education for science and industry, education for power and even education for death. But the real problem is education for man. Man may make various uses of his education in contributing to political and social enlightenment, in increasing our technological control, in elevating the standards of the multitude, and in diminishing human pain and suffering (or in increasing the agony of men by multiplying methods and instruments of war and death). These uses, however, are after-products. The particular product — and the root-problem — is man and his personal and spiritual awakening, growth and fulfillment.

The subject I am discussing here deals with a very peculiar kind of knowledge — a kind of knowledge whose means is not concepts and reasoning, but affective inclination or affinity, and which is often disregarded by philosophers interested only in the rational kind of knowing. Henri Bergson liked to quote a sentence he found in the letters of a French philosopher; the sentence was as follows: “I have suffered from this friend enough to know him.” When I know a friend to the core — not through having submitted him to a complete series of psychological tests, but because I have suffered from him and have got in myself the habit of his nature — then we may say in philosophical language that I know this man by connaturality.

Catholic activity in the United States since our entry into the war has been the subject of much writing. The singular position of Pope Pius XII, the head of the Church, now in the path of the fighting armies in Italy, Catholic opposition to Communism and Fascism, the multiple national origins of the Catholic group, together with the unquestionable generosity of Catholic men and women in the service of the country, have raised some interesting questions about the position of American Catholics on the war. It is too soon to write a definitive account even of what is now history, but the picture of the manifold activity of Catholics in America is an enticing, if difficult, picture to draw.

Fear of concentration of power in the hands of one group or one person has written into many constitutions in the past hundred and seventy years or more a variety of safeguarding provisions against uncontrolled and arbitrary exercise of authority. Revolutionary leaders in America, conscious of the abuses of power against which they had successfully taken up arms, attempted to protect all future generations by incorporating into new covenants and fundamental laws salutary checks against tyranny. While for the most part the authors of the American fundamental law had not been the idealistic, enthusiastic leaders of the Revolution, they were sufficiently imbued with revolutionary thinking and ideology to incorporate checks against concentrated power in the Constitution. It is true that they feared different tyrants: the common sense of Madison could see tyranny in the uncontrolled demos of urban centers; the penetrating intellect of a James Wilson could see it in the preponderant influence of an aristocracy; the unstable and emotional Patrick Henry could see it in any form of strong government. All the framers of our fundamental law were on the look-out for tyranny. Their minds ran naturally to checks against one group or another, or one governmental institution or another.

I Do not have to relate the story of the partitions of Poland, 1772, 1793 and 1795. In two decades Russia took the greatest part of Poland, including in the first place all those now so-called eastern Polish borderlands, which had coexisted with Poland for exactly four centuries. After the Napoleonic War and the Congress of Vienna Russia obtained even more, because to these lands was added the central part of Poland, called the Kingdom of Poland. Poland fought against this domination— in the insurrection of Kosciuszko in 1794, the insurrection of 1830–31, the insurrection of 1863, the revolutionary movements of 1905. These insurrections and these movements produced three results: (l) they maintained and preserved the spirit of independence in the nation; (2) they maintained and preserved in European public opinion the still international character of the political question, of which they became a bloody symbol; (3) they augmented and deepened the Russian oppression. Indeed, most of the cultural achievements that Poland had made were destroyed; on the other hand, nothing was done to continue the natural development of the country, which, just because of that constant arrest of its development, was not able to follow the march of time. The University of Wilno was liquidated; the Lyceum of Krzemieniec was liquidated, and with its wealth the Russians organized their Russian University of Kiev. Museums, libraries, collections of art were confiscated and evacuated. Catholic churches were converted into Russian churches and monasteries.

Three hundred years ago the people of England were engaged is a terrible civil war. Among the young men then about to come of age was Robert Boyle (1627–1691). Except for Newton, he did more than any other Englishman of the late seventeenth century to make Great Britain the center of the great school of natural philosophy, whose achievements Voltaire was to insist constituted one of the chief glories of the age of Louis XIV. Boyle was horrified by war. He regarded it as a disease of human societies. In 1646 he wrote about it from London with touches of wisdom astonishing to hear, especially from a boy of nineteen. He had had conversations with a number of partisans of the House of Commons, with men who were destined to be on the winning side. Those who look forward to victory today as the solution of their troubles might meditate to advantage upon his words.

Georges Bernanos is established as a great novelist. But today the author of The Stdr of Satan and The Diary of a Country Priest stands as a prophet. The honest, impassioned and radical judgments of A Diary of Our Times and of the recent Plea for Liberty are those of a man who can no longer contain his devotion to people, his profound concern for their souls, within the limits of any art pattern. He must break out, no matter how wonderful his power within the realm of art, and evangelize his convictions more directly. It is common now to see important poets and novelists assuming responsibility for the social salvation of mankind: the mention only of T. S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Thomas Mann and Sigrid Undset (separated widely in art and outlook, of course, but all united in their criticism of modern civilization and in their hope that justice may finally exist among the men of the earth) will be sufficient verification. This is not a time, it appears, in which the pure speculations and naked truths of philosophers and theologians easily subdue and win minds. For this is a day of the denial of absolutes and the measured thought of formal philosophers and formal religious thinkers, even the most true and sympathetic, has small influence with the multitudes of confused. So poets and artists, out of their more concrete and more attractive, unanalytical handling of experience, rise to speak.

“I Must take recourse to fiction and put together a figure made up of many things like the fabulous unions of goats and stags which are found in pictures." So speaks the philosopher in Plato's Republic when he faces the enigmatic nature of the common man or the people. Then he proceeds to evoke two images.

Territorial disputes are not the only, probably not even the main cause of war, and territorial settlement is not the only and perhaps not the most important aspect of a peace treaty. Still, territorial change after a war is its most conspicuous effect, one which is held in the memory of generations. For two generations of Frenchmen, Alsace-Lorraine was an open wound, a program unifying them much better than any slogan relating to internal affairs. For the generation of Germans which matured after the First World War, the idea of the lost provinces was an intolerable humiliation. During the past few years, similar ideas have become dominant in the minds of the Russians.

If race-thinking were a German invention, as it is now sometimes asserted, then “German thinking” (whatever that may be) was victorious in many parts of the spiritual world long before the Nazis started their illfated attempt at world conquest. Hitlerism exercised its strong international and inter-Europeanappeal during the 'thirties because racism, although a state doctrine only in Germany, had been everywhere a powerful trend in public opinion. The Nazi political warmachine had long been in motion when in 1939 German tanks began their march of destruction, since—in political warfare—racism was calculated to be a more powerful ally than any paid agent or any secret organization of fifth columnists. Strengthened by the experiences of almost two decades in the various capitals, the Nazis were confident that their best “propaganda” would be their racial policy itself, from which, despite many other compromises and broken promises, they had never drifted away for expediency's sake. Racism was neither a new nor a secret weapon, though never before had it been used with this thorough-going consistency.

WaltherRathenau's influence on the beginnings of both war economy and planned economy is generally recognized. In America, however, it is not so well known that two other men besides Rathenau stood at the cradle of these new forms of economic organization. These two men, Josef Koeth and Wichard von Moellendorrf, and their activities between 1914 and 1919 are the subject of this paper.

A discussion of the “art of politics” requires no justification at a time when the potentials of publicity and propaganda have made it abundantly clear that successful government is not identical with application of the results of a Gallup poll. It is for this very reason that we have also become distrustful of the ars politica which has been more and more identified with the modern arts of persuasion. Although the engineers of political publicity assure us that with the right technique the ruler can get anything “across,” we turn rather to those who assert that good government is not an art but an active prudence, directed by such steady instruments of control as popular representation. However, even the most perfect technology of government is not a substitute for the art of governing. Guizot, no friend of absolutism, has pointed out one of the most astonishing manifestations of this “art”: the ability of the ancien régime to maintain between people and ruler an intimate understanding without parliaments in the modern sense.

The history of the Third French Republic is, in one of its fundamental aspects, that of a great politico-religious crisis. In this period the political and religious problems were very closely interrelated. In fact, the religious problem was in large part stated in political terms as the political problem was stated in religious terms. The political conflict and the religious conflict coincided rather closely. Andté Siegfried, observing this fact in his book, Tableau des partis en France, quotes the humorous explanation of a Leftist candidate who had been defeated in a department of central France: “The amusing part of the election was that my disagreement with my fellow citizens was not about the things of this world, but about those of the next. Because my opponents repeated it to me so many times, I now believe they would have willingly trusted me with the things of this world if we had only been able to agree on those of the next. I was defeated as politically incompetent for theological reasons.”

The name of Peter Tkachev is virtually unknown outside of Russia. Even in Russia his importance in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement received but belated recognition. During his lifetime, he met with strong opposition on the part of the majority of Russian revolutionaries. A hostile attitude towards his personality and his ideas remained predominant in revolutionary circles for a long time after his death (1886). It was only after the revolution that he began to attract more sympathetic attention.

As a by-product of the Napoleonic wars the Concert of Europe emerged as the institution responsible for the order of the Continent and even for peaceful change. With the admission of France it was a system of equilibrium founded upon a balance of political power among the five Great Powers which acted in the name of Europe as a unity. The Concert of Europe contained elements that were clearly judicial. It was not at all a mere sociological or political fact. But its juridical elements were weak, obscured by the anti-nationalist and anti-liberal tendencies of the founders. Nevertheless, the Concert of Europe enjoyed more success in solving problems peacefully than did the League of Nations, because the former's responsibility as a pouvoir minoritaire, to use Hauriou's concept, was clear and distinct. It is of course self-evident that the existence and efficiency of the Concert depended upon a community of several interests. It is equally obvious, too, that the Concert grew weaker as more material for political conflict between the Great Powers piled up, and the more their general interest gave way to particular and opposing interests. By the close of the century the Concert of the Great Powers was being slowly rent asunder through the formation of the Triple Alliance and the emergence of the Triple Entente. So it was that Europe ‘stumbled’, as Lloyd George has said, into the war of 1914–18.

The antiquary, professed collector of the manuscripts and records of the past, is popularly ranked with the harmless butterfly-collector. Lytton Strachey characterized him as an “amiable muddler,” and Alexander Pope pilloried his dreary obscurantism.

But who is he in closet close y-pent

Of sober face, with learned dust besprent?

Right well mine eyes arede the myster wight

On parchment scraps y-fed and Wormius hight.

To future ages may thy dulness last

As thou preservst the dulness of the past.

There dim in clouds, the poring scholiasts mark,

Wits who, like owls, see only in the dark,

A lumber-house of books in every head,

For ever reading, never to be read.

These opinions are peculiarly shortsighted, for antiquarianism, the collection and study of old records, has been neither obscure nor harmless in its consequences. Hans Kohn and Carlton Hayes have made clear the considerable part played by antiquaries in stimulating a consciousness of nationalism, the most powerful public emotion of modern times.

Peace-planning is the attempt to invent institutions and to reformulate policies to prevent future wars. Among the numerous ideas on the future organization of the peace, the idea of disarmament has found particularly wide acceptance. In time of peace, there is no need of maintaining armies and armaments on their war time level. Farreaching demobilization is an economic necessity. Consequently, no objections are being raised against the substantial reduction of armaments after the end of hostilities.

The efforts of the Italian people to create the basis of a new political life are proceeding amidst the most serious difficulties, but not without well-founded hopes for the future. There is hunger in Italy today—and insecurity, unemployment, lack of transportation and of some of the bare necessities of civilized human life. Worst of all, there is inflation on a fearful scale, with its destruction of economic and moral values, with its sudden impoverishment of whole classes. No wonder that some foreign observers have reported apathy among the people with regard to political problems. It is difficult to imagine any other attitude under conditions which make life a nightmare. Nevertheless, the outlines of things to come are taking shape.

A Word is like a coin. With a particular coin different men at different times purchase goods of the same or very similar value. With a particular word different men at different times designate the same or a very similar value. Every coin in the course of its history is subjected to different changes in value; for the same coin may suddenly obtain more or less in exchange. Exactly thus does the value of a word change; it can at one time denote more, at another less; a more comprehensive or a more restricted concept. And just as for the coin, there comes also for the word the day on which it is “removed from circulation.” As a coin can become valueless, so a word can become senseless, insignificant.

The outstanding merit of James Madison consists in having contributed notably to the making of a constitution that would serve as an instrument of government to achieve the happiness of the nation and the greatness of the United States of America. Without departing from modern political doctrines, the formula conceived by him is perfectly suited to the social life, temperament, manners, and natural inclination of the American people; reconciling in this way the rational juridical principle of self-government with what Santa Maria de Paredes calls “the historical positive.” It is something made to measure, by masterly hands, in accordance with the supreme postulates of science.