It is normal today to defend the right of one state to make war against another by comparing a war against aggression with a private individual’s exercise of his right of self-defence. If I have a right to live, it seems that I must have a right to protect my life against violent and unjust attack; it is probable that in order effectively to protect myself I may have to use violence, even such as to cause the death of the aggressor in a case of extreme necessity. If an individual can do this, then clearly an organized group can do the same, and this implies the use of an army by a state. Such an army would be used as an individual uses his fists or his sword or his gun in a lawless land; it would be used to protect the life of the country in an internationally lawless world.

Such is the commonsense approach to the justification of war today; and such, if we make allowances for the lack of theological refinement, is the current Catholic view of the just war. It depends for its cogency on an extension of the rights of the individual to the rights of the state.

It may cause some surprise, therefore, to those who regard Saint Augustine as the main source of the just war tradition to find that not only is such a line of reasoning absent from his writings, but that it is in fact directly contrary to his teaching.

In his treatise on Freewill, he states clearly that an individual has no moral right to kill an assailant in defence of life, liberty or honour. A law permitting such killing may well be objectively reasonable, since it permits the lesser of two evils; it is a lesser evil for a robber to be killed than for a good man to be killed.

The year 1962 has seen a remarkable step forward here in England in the recognition of ‘unity’ or ‘reunion’ work as ‘a particular charge and duty of the Church’; an ‘excellent work’, which ‘should daily assume a more significant place within the Church’s universal pastoral care’. In these words the Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office on the Ecumenical Movement describes the place of Catholic Ecumenism in the Church’s apostolate. This important Papal document was published in December 1949. It was addressed to Local Ordinaries, the Bishops of the Church, and its first concern was to remind them that Bishops, whom the Holy Ghost has placed to rule the Church of God, ought to make this ‘reunion’ work a special object of their care and attention. They must not only use great diligence in keeping it under effective supervision, they must also give it prudent encouragement and direction, with the twofold purpose of assisting those who are in search of truth and the true Church, and of shielding the faithful from the dangers which so easily accompany the progress of this movement.

To implement this directive of the Holy See more effectively the hierarchy of England and Wales appointed from among their number, a year ago, a committee for Unity to represent them in the guidance and promotion of unity work. The President of this committee is Archbishop Heenan of Liverpool, and he and his fellow bishops who are members of it have lost no time in getting to work on their important task. It is this that is responsible for the considerable movement forward of Catholic Ecumenism in England which this year is witnessing. Several meetings have been organized, with the committee’s sanction, of Anglican and Catholic scholars, for the discussion of ecumenical questions at a deep theological level.

A drawing of Dante on the dust-cover of this new study of the Divine Comedy gives the poet a slightly Oriental look—and is that a helmet he is wearing? The suggestion, anyhow, of the Mongolian and the martial, whether intended or not, may perhaps be linked with the fact that the author is a young North Korean who served with distinction in the Korean army against the Communists before going to America to study philosophy at Yale. Mr Swing is a convert to the Catholic faith and, to judge from this book, his Dante studies have a good deal to do with his religion. He has fed his mind on the strong Christian meat of the Comedy: it has formed in fact his introduction to theology, and he now repays the debt with a theological introduction to it. And because his mind is exceptionally vigorous and original, and because he is very well acquainted with Dante’s poem (though not, I think, with its literary and historical background) he has given us an extremely interesting and even valuable book. So much had better be said at once, and emphatically, because it would be only too easy to multiply objections in detail to Swing’s work, while missing or only half-appreciating its merits as a whole. It is likely to irritate scholars—that irritable race—and on the other hand it takes its subject too seriously to prove easy reading for people who do not already know the Divine Comedy fairly well. Thus it may in effect fall between two stools, leaving the scholars full of their ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’, and the others somewhat bewildered. And that, I am sure, would be a pity; but before I go on to say why, it may be of interest to glance round the field which our young Korean critic has entered as a newcomer.

The celebration of the eighty-fifth birthday last October in Oberst- dorff, Bavaria, of Gertrud von le Fort passed off practically without comment in this country. Whilst the name of this Catholic authoress may not be unknown to the English public (the best known of her works, Die Letzte am Schafott, was the source of an opera by Poulenc performed at Covent Garden in 1958, and also of a Georges Bemanos scripted film produced in 1960), it would be true to say that much of her work remains literally a closed book—an unfortunate state of affairs, since her writings are concerned with many of the themes of more internationally celebrated literary figures such as Mauriac or our own Graham Greene.

Of Huguenot descent, Gertrud von le Fort was born in 1876 in Minden, Westphalia, and can trace a rich family history back to the times of the Reformation (three Le Forts fought as officers of Louis XVI in the Tuilleries, whilst the most famous of her ancestors, Francois le Fort had been admiral and companion to Peter the Great). From her father, a Prussian army officer, comes her love of history, plus a knowledge of military life, which stands her in good stead, for example, in her Die Magdeburgische Hochzeit, whilst her interest in religion stems from her mother, a devout Protestant believer. It was these subjects, History and Religion, that she proceeded to study at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, coming at the former under the guidance of the learned philosopher, Ernst Troeltsch; to him she is indebted for showing her the place of history as a basis for her work.