A little over two hundred years ago there was published A Discourse on a Subject Proposed by the Academy of Dijon: What is the Origin of Inequality Among Man, and is it Authorized by Natural Law? The importance of this work has been indicated by Jean Jacques Rousseau himself. In the Confessions he stressed that all the “strong ideas” contained in the Social Contract were present in the Discourse on Inequality and earlier in the Letter to M. Beaumont he had stated that all his works contained the same principles, the same morality, and the same beliefs.

To include in the same sentence the name of Bernanos and the term “political” or “politics” suggests an initial difficulty. Nothing was farther from his impatient and burning temperament than the meticulousness of the news analyst, or the specialist's careful dissection of the political animal. His domain was, rather, the philosopher's insight and intuition, the social critic's scorn and wrath, and the prophet's prediction of doom. He stated about himself:

People say that Bernanos is never pleased about anything or anyone. When the righteous were wishing success to the crusade of our good neighbour, Señor Franco, he wrote Les Grands Cimetiéres sous la lune, and defended himself as being above all democratic. Now [1947] that all righteous are each more democratic than the other, he still proclaims himself Catholic, and no more democratic than before. A peculiar fellow, that Bemanos.

National self-determination and the United Nations are modern concepts of political thought. Of the two the first is older and has struck much stronger roots. Its origin can be traced back to the American and French revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century. The latter gained recognition only in the period of the First World War. Both owe their conceptual frame and their ideological content to modem Western civilization, above all to Anglo-American thought. Yet the two concepts are to a degree contradictory: the United Nations envisages an international or supranational order at a time when nationalism—the insistence on national independence, self-determination, and self-expression as supreme political values and emotional guides—has for the first time in history become a world-wide phenomenon.

The most important thing to say about Americans and architecture* is that if we value the art of building at all it is usually when it is ancient or exotic or preferably both. This is simply one facet of the general American attitude toward the arts which, if it is changing at all, is changing slowly. Menotti observed some time ago that the typical American father was not very happy if his son asserted that he intended to be a composer. The same uneasiness develops if the son is interested in becoming a ballet dancer, a painter, a poet, an actor, a sculptor, or a physicist, although the sputnik-induced respectability of science and the consequent improvement of the scientist's economic status has, at least for the moment, quieted the parental fears about science as a profession if not as an art. We have to face the fact that at least until very recently the arts and the intellectual pursuits have been peripheral to American life. Calvin Coolidge was true to the current American attitudes when in 1925 he informed the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs that America had no representative contemporary paintings to send. Although there has been some change in the American view of the arts and of artists since then, some increased curiosity about the products, even some improvement in the popular critical taste; although there has been a comparable improvement in the respectability of the artists, the gain has not been great. There may be no country in the civilized world in which the artist is, in the last analysis, held in lower esteem. All this affects what American architecture is, what it has been, and what it is likely to be. For architecture is an art and that must never be forgotten.

Cultural exchange* between the United States and other countries is, in large part, simply a function of educational, scientific, and cultural life within the United States itself. In the midst of the continuing debate on education and science, and the role of the Government, we hear of proposals for the pooling of scientific skills among the North Atlantic nations; of the recent establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency. We learn, perhaps with some surprise, that most nations and practically all general inter-Governmental organizations give some attention, and even some money, to international cultural activities. These include the Organization of American States, NATO, SEATO, and the United Nations with its specialized agencies, especially UNESCO. We read in the daily newspapers of the recent agreement for cultural exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union and its consequences, and we realize that this kind of thing, in the United States as elsewhere, has become very much a matter of Government interest, negotiation and action.

Herodotus, who has been rightly called the Father of Western history, tells us in the first sentence of the Persian Wars that the purpose of his enterprise is to preserve that which owes its existence to men (ta genomena ex anthrôpôn), lest it be obliterated by time, and to bestow upon the glorious, wondrous deeds of Greeks and Barbarians sufficient praise to assure their remembrance by posterity and thus make their glory shine through the centuries.

Everywhere* in the world today, we see forces defying each other, preparing to invade other countries as well as organizing resistance to invasion. Is it possible that out of this turmoil of interests, emotions, opinions, impressions, a constructive and coherent international life can emerge? Are we simply at the mercy of events and of conditioned reflexes, or is it possible that a constructive foreign policy can be conceived by rational thought and pursued consistently in the light of reason?

InAustralian Hopes and Fears Colin Clark appears at one point or another in all of his several guises: statistician, economist, newspaper commentator on public affairs, and exponent of a Roman Catholic Weltanschauung. He has written several earlier books which embrace the first two and steadiest of his regular employments, notably The Conditions of Economic Progress, and he has written a very great deal in a miscellany of newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets which falls under the latter heads, but this, I think, is the first occasion on which he has given expression to the several facets of his mind in a single book. The result is utterly fascinating, not least because of Clark's extraordinary capacity for stating highly provocative views in a “dead pan” fashion, as though uttering dusty platitudes. No reader unacquainted with the Australian scene will fully appreciate just how often Clark sets a cat among the pigeons, nor how adept he is at redefining cats and pigeons. The reader must proceed, constantly on the alert for what on earth is coming next, this in spite of the fact that much of the book is ostensibly straight exposition. Clark's willingness to take the risks of discrimination and judgment within his particular frame of reference keeps his writing lively. The question one really has in mind all along is whether or not he takes all the facts into account before phrasing his pointed conclusions.