When Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik party, was appointed by the second all-Russian Soviet Congress as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars in November 1917, neither he nor his adversaries believed that the new regime would last very long. Trotski tells how a conservative Russian officer helped to defend Petrograd against the advancing troops of the counter-revolution because he hated liberals and democrats and did not believe that the Bolsheviks could stay in power. And Lenin was very proud when he could announce that the Bolshevik regime had lasted longer than the abortive Parisian Commune of 1871.

Under the French Third Republic it was customary for candidates for the presidency to make no statement concerning their aspirations to high office. It would have destroyed all chances had they revealed a cherished conviction on any vital public question. Now and then exceptions occurred. So firmly established, however, did the custom become, that a politician's silence on problems of the commonwealth spoke eloquently of his intentions. If he attended the opening of schools and hospitals, the conferring of official honors, and like occasions and indulged in harmless specimens of rhetoric, his aspirations were undeniable. He stood above the noise and confusion of everyday political strife, thus showing his outstanding qualifications for an office that, theoretically at least, existed in a non-partisan world of its own.

In 1815 Friedrich Gentz noted: “Napoleon's downfall was a pure and unqualified advantage for Russia; for the rest of Europe, and especially for the states bordering on Russia, it was largely balanced by the increased strength that she secured for herself at the expense of the general equilibrium. For this great power there is virtually no further real danger; if she attacks her neighbors her greatest risk is merely diat she may fail in her purpose and have to postpone her venture to a more favorable time. The difficulty of penetrating Russia's interior is now so generally recognized that only lunacy and despair could prompt an attempt to conquer this great empire. While the other states of Europe exhausted themselves in the struggle against Napoleon, Russia who allied herself with him understood well how to extract the most solid benefits from the ephemeral union. It would be easy for her to fall upon her neighbors, for she has so many greedy ambitious reasons for trying it, and, if the expression be allowed, such substantially centrifugal habits, that war, which others regard as a necessary evil, will always be to the Russians a matter of choice, of emotion, and of speculation.“

From the end of the religious wars to the First World War, the modern state system was kept together by the intellectual and moral tradition of the Western world. That tradition imposed moral and legal limitations on the struggle for power on the international in a certatin measure, maintained order in the international community and secured the independence of its individual members. What is left of this heritage today? What kind of consensus unites the nations of the world in the period following the Second World War?

In his Life of St. Patrick Jocelin of Furness quotes an Irish saying: “The Lord gave Ireland not to Palladius, but to Patrick.” This is indeed the view of the Patrick legend from the seventh century onwards. According to this legend, Pope Celestine sent his archdeacon Palladius to Ireland to preach Christ to the Irish; but Palladius failed completely, “because nobody can take from the world that which is not given him from above.” It was his successor Patrick who laid the foundations of the Irish church.

This legend, to say the least, over-simplifies the facts. Prosper of Aquitaine, a contemporary of Palladius, distinctly tells us that Palladius was sent “to the Irish believing in Christ” as their first bishop, in other words, with orders to organize a diocese on the basis of Christian communities already existing, however sporadic the latter may have been. The legend is further contradicted by a seventh century Irish tradition which has preserved the names of three churches founded by Palladius in Leinster.

No minority group in the United States is probably as formless and yet at the same time as rigid as the American membership of the Roman Catholic Church. The rigidity of the Catholic organization arises from the fact that there has never been a real heresy during the three centuries and more of Catholic life within the boundaries of the present United States. Even the so-called heresy of Americanism existed more in the minds of European theologians than in the Catholics of the new world. There have been divergencies among American Catholics on such questions as the application of Gregory XVI's condemnation of the slave trade, the timeliness of die declaration of papal infallibility or the extent of the papal condemnation of secret societies, but there has been no difference on the essential doctrines involved in these disputes.

On the political scene of the postwar world, the opposition between the United States and the Soviet Union has been the dominant fact. The unfolding of this opposition has been, and will be, to a large extent, determined by the relative strength of the two parties: the closer it is to equality, the easier could it develop into a shooting war. If it so develops, die same relationship of strength will become one of the major determinants of victory.

What is the relative strength of the central foes? In this paper, the strength of the United States will be taken for granted. Contrariwise, the strength of the Soviet Union will be treated as an unknown magnitude to be found on the basis of evidence available.

The international protection of human rights has in recent years become a prominent topic in the literature on international law and on the agenda of international conferences. The explanation for this is not far to seek. The experiences of two world wars and the ‘oppression of dictators’ would in themselves be sufficient reasons for such interest. Re-assertion of the inalienable rights of man serves as a reminder of the truth that man is not meant to be merely a means to the attainment of transient ends. Though the academic character of the many schemes propounded is only too apparent, they evoke sympathy; for they voice widely-felt anxiety over the ever-increasing pressure of organized groups upon the individual, the ultimate basis of life in national and international society. Charters of human rights, suitably formulated in the abstract, have also an undeniable utility value in war and peace. They provide a convenient common denominator for allies who are primarily united in negatives, that is to say, by common enmity towards their adversaries. Once victory has eliminated the unifying element, the functions of such wartime ideologies change. They become ‘artillery of popular excitation’ in the peacetime struggles of world power politics and, like religion in former times, a ‘cloak to shadow divers factious designes.’

The current trend toward conservatism in American politics is most pronounced in the field of labor relations. This should occasion no surprise in view of the well-known fact that legislation in behalf of labor was die essential and constant element in New Deal liberalism. In keeping with the “American way” of swinging the political pendulum periodically from liberalism to conservatism and back again, the present Congress enacted the Taft-Hartley Labor-Management Relations Act with the aim of curbing the power of union labor so succesfully enhanced by the New Deal. The bitter controversy attending die passage of die Act and the unrelenting and all but unanimous opposition of organized labor and many of its friends to die continuance of the law underscore die paramount importance of labor questions in the country's maturing economy. Other phases of labor legislation are indirectly involved in the present reaction: health insurance, and increased coverage and more generous benefits under the Social Security and Fair Labor Standards Acts. Though diese supplements are badly needed, they fail to arouse general enthusiasm in the climate of opinion that now prevails.

The American party system has been under attack almost continuously since it took definite form in the time of Andrew Jackson. The criticism has always been dircted at the same point: America's political pluralism, the distinctively American organization of government by compromise of interests, pressure groups and sections. And the aim of the critics from Thaddeus Stevens to Henry Wallace has always been to substitute for this “unprincipled” pluralism a government based as in Europe on “ideologies” and “principles.” But never before—at least not since the Civil War years—has the crisis been as acute as in this last decade; for the political problems which dominate our national life today: foreign policy and industrial policy, are precisely the problems which interest and pressure-group compromise is least equipped to handle. And while the crisis symptoms: a left-wing Thirl Party and the threatened split-off of the Southern Wing, are more alarming in the Democratic Party, the Republicans are hardly much better off. The 1940 boom for the “idealist” Wilkie and the continued inability to attract a substantial portion of the labor vote, are definite signs that the Republican Party too is under severe ideological pressure.

The problem of the Patriarch Photius involved one of the most tangled and bitter differences that hamper friendly relations between Eastern and Western Christianity. Since the Renaissance, Photius, a Greek scholar of the ninth century, has been venerated by philosophers and philologists alike as the genius who among others was instrumental in transmitting to later generations classical Greek and Hellenic culture. On the other hand, Photius' name has been associated with the rise of the first schism in the ninth century when, under Pope Nicholas I, Photius played a prominent part in the first clash between the papacy and the East. The result is that the same man who is venerated as a saint by the Eastern Church, and as one of the last living witnesses of the tradition of the early Christian Fathers, has been for centuries regarded by the Christian West as the father of the great schism, as a prevaricator who falsified papal letters and conciliar Acts, and as a symbol of pride and lust for ecclesiastical domination. It is evident that both views cannot be right. Hence, the history of the Patriarch still stands as the greatest stumbling block barring the way to a better understanding between eastern and western Christendom. The apparent impossibility of reconciling such contradictory estimates has left historians with the feeling that history in this case finds itself in a cul-de-sac.

It is not within the purpose of this paper to appraise the historical significance which the Council of Trent held for the consolidation of Catholic doctrine on all the points of dogmatic and sacramental theology that had been put into question by the religious innovators. Nor shall we examine the role which its measures of canonical legislation played in the great process of spiritual and disciplinary renewal which eventually determined the position of the Catholic Church in the modern world. We propose rather to turn our attention to the great goal which the Council did not reach: the restoration of the one Respublica Christiana, of the Catholic unity which prior to the sixteenth century had been the only conceivable form of Christian religious existence. To the eye of the historian, it is true, the rift in Western Christendom appears quite obviously prepared by the developments of two centuries preceding Luther's challenge. The exile of Avignon; the great schism; the constitutional unrest of the conciliar epoch of Constance and Basel; the political realism by which Renaissance popes had sought above all to consolidate their position as Italian territorial rulers; the growth of the national states and national sovereignties; the ferment of humanistic ideologies—they all were alarming and distressing symptoms of the radical disintegration of mediaeval unity.

“Heraldry in this reign [Edward III] received the highest polish: in future times it was more gorgeously attired; but with its simplicity it lost its greatest merit.“ Change or progress which the world hails as warmly as it yearns for the permanent and the familiar has disordered and corrupted all hierarchies of men. Mediaeval society may be given an intellectual formulation which is a marvel of order. The peasant toils, the noble fights and the clerk prays. But the clashing reality hastily reveals how uncomprehensive the division is. Where is the merchant or the fortunate adventurer? If the nobleman must be endowed with lands and wealth as a mark of his station and to afford him the leisure for war, what is the status of the merchant who has profitably held the wolf of avarice by the tail? If wealth is a mark of position, does the possession of an adequate supply of silver marks, involving power as it does, also bring with it position? Over the centuries it always has, although society has often urbanely pretended that high degree went only to wealth grown old or has saved itself from vulgarity by insisting that gentility went only with land (which was purchasable).

It seems impossible to sort out where all the many strands in British life are leading just now, or to forecast the political future of the country. Too much depends on outside influences. There is the world-wide question of the future of relations between America and Russia. There is the question of what way continental Europe will turn in the next year or two. There is the appalling complication of the economic crisis. The political situation at home and abroad is still a fluid one.

Some American readers may have read a “London Letter” by Arthur Koesder to the Partisan Review which appeared some months ago. Koestler, with all his ability for penetrating and destructive criticism, called England an island of “virtue and gloom.” This is an impression many people now get when they compare England with continental countries in many ways far worse off, such as France or Italy.

Few movements of ideas or of public opinion have been more significant than the Russian radicalism of the 1860's, of which D. I. Pisarev (1840–1868) was the most popular and effective propagandist. Turgenev in his Fathers and Children attached to this trend die appellation of ‘nihilism.’ The Russian scholar Nestor Kotlyarevski has characterized this movement as follows: ‘The radicalism of die 60's was a complete rejection of all the previously dominant views regarding the abstract fundamentals of life and an attempt to replace these views by a new outlook based upon a materialist and utilitarian interpretation of all the problems of life and the spirit.’ The Russian intellectual movement of the 60's represents the most decisive phase in pre-Soviet Russia of that process of the ‘desertion of die intellectuals’ which Crane Brinton has singled out as an essential characteristic of a disintegrating ‘old regime.’ The revolt of die intellectuals assumed in Russia extreme and peculiar forms. A special group, almost a sect, known as the intelligentsia, developed. This group, as Berdyaev says, ‘lived in schism with its environment, which it considered evil.’

This year the scholarly world celebrates the four hundredth birthday of Francis Suarez, perhaps the brightest star in the scholarly heavens of Spain's Siglo de Oro and the greatest master of the second flowering of Scholasticism, a flowering which began with the works of Francis de Vittoria. Suarez' life is that of the teacher, the prodigious writer, and of the religious, devoted to students, to study, and to the religious life as a member of the then still young Societas Jesu. In contradistinction to Saint Robert Bellarmine, he published only a few controversial books in the theological and political disputes of his time. His reputation was established by his exhaustive, systematic representation of the Philosophia Perennls and of Theology.

International politics, like nature, is a system of processes. There are no simple causes and effects of historical developments. The record of the past tends to determine the present — until circumstance intervenes. Peoples, like individuals, are at the mercy of what is called chance, and an apparently meaningless combination of circumstances may frustrate the culmination of long-developed tendencies. Tendency is conservative of past forms, and circumstance may appear formless, but their balanced interplay is the source of novel forms. It is only within the frame of reference of these three terms — tendency, circumstance and novelty — that forecasting future developments can derive its warrant from an exact science of prediction. The basic conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union is the central issue of world politics. Sir Halford Mackinder's celebrated theorem — the juxtaposition of the continental empire of Eurasia and the Oceanic Powers, and the contest over the vast rimland interposed be-between the “heartland” and the littoral of Eurasia — is today as brilliant a summation of the world strategic problem as it was forty years ago when it was first propounded.

An understanding of present-day Finland is conditioned upon an understanding of Finland prior to 1939. The background for the last eight years must come from the early Middle Ages, when Finland became united with the Kingdom of Sweden and carried on more or less constant warfare on the side of that country against Russia. When, in 1809, Russia defeated Sweden in war, she forced the latter to cede Finland to her. Finland was, however, immediately granted die status of an autonomous Grand Duchy. During the century of Russian sovereignty, even though the Finns racially and linguistically differed from the Scandinavian people, they retained their old Western culture, and continued to form a part of the Scandinavian group; in short, the fact that Finland fell under Russian control for over a hundred years made very little lasting impression upon Finnish institutions and culture. In 1906, the Tsar approved the new Parliament Act whereby the old Finnish Diet of four estates was changed into a truly democratic single-chambered legislature, chosen by universal and equal suffrage.

The outcome of the Italian election's can be summarized statistically as follows. In the elections for the Chamber of Deputies (the only ones to be taken into account in these comments), a total of 26 million citizens went to the polls, or about 92% of the registered voters, as against 23 millions in 1946. Almost 13 millions cast their ballot for Christian-Democracy in 1948 as against 8 millions in 1946; about 10 millions for Marxist parties, as against 9 millions in 1946. All remaining parties and groups obtained about 3.5 million votes as against nearly double that number in 1946. These figures would seem to indicate that Christian-Democracy got about two-thirds of all first time voters, in addition to the support of those electors who refused to renew their confidence in the smaller parties. Marxism not only stood its ground but was able to add one million new supporters. The tendency, already so clear in 1946, towards the disintegration of smaller parties, became even more apparent in 1948; in certain regions of northern Italy they disappeared completely, and the south remained the only part of the country offering a last lingering haven to the groups which ruled Italy for the sixty years before the advent of fascism.