We can learn certain things from the Communist system, and one of the most important of these is the dependence of successful practice on theory. Theory serves to guide, integrate, and rationalize a series of actions, and without it those actions tend to be atomistic and fruitless.

Indeed, the classic failures of our confrontations with Communist countries can be traced at least in part fo a theoretical misperception of what the Communists were, and the lack of a guiding theory on our part. It is possible, for example, to interpret the unhappy decisions of the World War II period as resulting from a mismatch of opponents: the Soviet Union's inferior power position was more than compensated for by a relatively coherent and creative theory of the world, while the superior strength of the United States was substantially negated because this country followed a policy path that may be described as a kind of political existentialism.

There can be little doubt that the omission on the part of John XXIII to speak of communism in either of the two greatest encyclicals of our time, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris, has caused grave consternation in various Catholic circles.

This consternation has gone as far as Vatican II. The Council from the beginning was born on a note of positive confrontation with the modern world in the open spirit of John XXIII. It was taken for granted that from the opening words of John to the Council Fathers, there would be no anathemas and condemnations.

These comments were not inspired by the articles in recent issues of worldview, but they have, I think, a decided revelance. A Smith student told me recently of a Vietnam teach-in held cooperatively by Smith, Holyoke, Amherst and the University of Massachusetts. She discussed some of the speakers at this teach-in—among them a physicist, a professor of English, and a political scientist. The only trouble was, she said, the physics and English professors kept raising moral issues, and all we heard from the political professor in reply was power politics.

I think this remark highlights a very serious issue today in American discussions about Vietnam. If one side is talking only moral issues and the other talking only power politics, there is no true dialogue. People only end up shouting at each other.