One of the most debated issues among students of Christian ethics today concerns the relation of the universal or at least broadly based criteria in an ethical judgment to the unique elements in the concrete situation. It is far from being simply an academic debate, for it has immediate relevance to our most pressing contemporary problems. It impinges directly upon any serious discussion concerning issues such as, e.g., desegregation, the morality of modern warfare, the cost of maintaining a free society or preventing the extension of Communism.

Even at such a relative side-show as the Communist-sponsored youth festival in Helsinki last July, the American delegation was able to note that two countries were the chosen targets of all propaganda: the United States and West Germany. The very consistency and crudity or the Soviet design is impressive: the old adage of divide et impera is practised with every available means, at times through brutal attack, at other times through the basest flattery. The goal at all times is to isolate the United States from Europe and isolate Germany within Europe.

To begin to assess the Third Assembly of the-World Council of Churches, which met in New Delhi, India, November 18-December 5, it is necessary to keep firmly fixed in mind the' intended function of such an Assembly and, even more importantly, what is not its function.

This cautionary advice, normally the most threadbare of clichés, gains its validity from the present atmosphere surrounding the subject of Christianity. Spurred on by a number of factors, including the attitude of Pope John XXIII; unity has become a glamorous and bewitching, albeit extremely vague, concept to the general public and to the popular press. Unknown and dramatic events are constantly being anticipated.

If the ultra-rightist balloon has not already burst, it is at least losing its air at a rapid rate. Together with the other ultra-right anti-Communist crusader groups, the John Birch Society has been condemned by every important political figure in the nation, even Barry Goldwater; by spokesmen and official bodies representing all the major religions, including Catholics, Baptists and evangelicals; by every newspaper and magazine that is not itself an avowed part of the extremist-right propaganda apparatus, even such as the New York Daily News and William F. Buckley's National Review.

The proposition which I should like to offer is that by being excessively preoccupied with a war which, should it materialize, we must certainly lose, we are in serious danger of losing another war in which we are already engaged. The war which we fear and for which we feverishly prepare to the tune of 50 billion dollars a year is thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union.

The only effective way we seem to have found to avoid nuclear war is to promote fear of its consequences in the Soviet bloc. Yet it may be that we will have to make substantial progress toward arms control in the next two decades if the possibility of avoiding general nuclear war is to become an acceptable probability. If progress is to be made, it will result not only from international political accommodation, but also from the intensive, collective effort of those scholars and officials who are involved in study, discussion and research regarding national security policy in general, and arms control in particular. In fact, the theory and concepts which they develop may in themselves be a means to the political accommodation which is needed, provided, of course, that corresponding efforts are also made in the Soviet bloc. Conversely, if these scholars and officials fail to apply adequate effort in this area, there may never be a solution to the problem of the threat of nuclear war.

Of the two prominent schools of political thought loosely labeled Utopian and realist, the first has been subjected to rigorous criticism. There is increasing evidence that- the realist position needs equally close examination. This paper considers one position from which such an examination can be made systematically.

The assumption of leadership of the Western world by the United States has been generally accepted by American statesmen, scholars and publicists as a necessary but painful task. The Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations have understood that, in the circumstances following the second World War, the United States national interest could only be furthered through cooperation with other nations of the free world.

It is the contention of this article that general rules of diplomatic conduct have been neglected and to a dangerous extent even abandoned; that democracy is ill-equipped to face Soviet diplomacy effectively; and that democracy has failed to exploit new diplomatic opportunities among the nations of Latin America, Africa and Asia. In order to present this thesis more fully—and to defend it—three aspects of modern diplomacy are offered for consideration: one, its general rules; two, the relative strengths and weaknesses of a democracy's diplomatic methods vis-a-vis Soviet diplomatic methods; and three, the Western powers' diplomatic opportunities toward the non-Communist world.

The people of this country may at last have faced up to the realities of all-out nuclear warfare. Russia's resumption of nuclear tests and the 100-megaton bomb have awakened us, for a brief moment, from the dream of deterrence. Even if this has meant only ratiier panicky discussion of “shelter morality,” it is good that we have looked out on the world with open eyes. Before world events permit us to return again to our slumbers, this moment should be seized; the opportunity to think through the moral and political dilemmas long inherent in our massive deterrence policy should not be allowed to slip from us.

As one attempts to think through the implications of the Cuban crisis for Berlin, it seems especially important not to generalize without careful analysis of all the factors in the two situations. It is understandable that in our first elation at “victory” the advocates of a hard line with Russia should assume that a similar, policy wilt work in Berlin. Actually, one must recognize that the blockade which obtained the withdrawal was a graduated use of force directed at a limited objective. It is by no means clear that a different procedure, for example carrying our grievance to the United Nations, would not have worked as well or better, particularly if one of our policy aims is to strengthen the United Nations.

A Tunisian aristocrat named Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun, after a stormy career in politics, retired to a castle in Algeria in 1375 and began to write a history of the world. Before embarking on his narrative, however, he gave unhurried thought to the nature of human history. That thought, set down in lengthy Muqaddimah (introduction) to his history, has won him a peerage among mankind's great thinkers. Arnold J. Toynbee has pronounced it “the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.”

The story of the Tower of Babel can teach us a great deal about man's political life. It begins at a time before time when “the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” Then men said to one another “Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make its a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” It is sad to report what happened to that first United Nations, at a time (if we are to believe the tale) far more auspicious for the union of mankind and for the ability of peoples to understand one another. The Lord (so the report reads) confounded their language, that they might not understand one another's speech—“and they left off to build the city” (Genesis ll;l-9).