Since the Italian General Elections of April 28-29, the buzz of speculation has been increasing noticeably. For they seem to have provided infinite diagnostic opportunities, as though to confirm Gaetano Salvemini's description of those scholars who incline “neither on the one hand to partiality nor on the other to impartiality.“

Thus, the losses of the Christian Democracy Party (CD) to the Liberal Right are explained as a rejection of the “opening to the left.” “On the other hand,” CD losses to the Socialist and Communist Left are attributed to the slowness with which the “opening” was being put into effect. From yet another side, the losses have been attributed to the melting away of old barriers against the Communist classenemy. Proponents of this view point with alarm to the encyclicals of the late Pope John, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris.

The community of intellectual and moral leaders of the nation have tended to treat with an aloofness that certainly reflects a feeling of moral opprobrium those who labor in the field of national defense, especially those who contribute to the intellectual content of that field. They frequently speak or write as if those professionally involved with national defense have somehow betrayed their intellectual heritage.

A key issue in modern international affairs is the policy of possessing nuclear weapons in order allegedly to prevent war. Christian conscience cannot evade the dilemma that this policy poses. It is easy to try to pull the sting from it by playing a game with words and theories.

A recent instance of a common way of pulling the sting is Bernard Brodie's “Morals and Strategy” (worldview, September 1964).

During last year's Military Procurement Authorization Hearings, a Senator requested that a speech relating current defense policy to the Christian just war doctrine be inserted into the record. He was quick to note, however, that he agreed only with some of the speaker's views on defense policy, not with the moral principles outlined: “You won't find them in any-doctrine in any church; in fact, the Catholic Church justifies the use of force to protect life and property.” Another Senator pointed out that the speech included the statement, “According to Christian doctrine the use of force to oppress evil can be justifiable under certain conditions,” and added the caution: “I would hope the implication is not that under certain other conditions it would be wrong to resist evil.“

In the light of that Commandment which states, “Thou shalt not kill,” and Our Lord's subsequent teaching in the New Testament, what should be our attitude to killing and war, in the precise situation in which we Christians now find ourselves in the nuclear age?

Unfortunately there is at the moment a most distressing and dangerous disunity on this in the Church, in Parliament, in the country, and in the Western Alliance. Three quite different attitudes are being adopted—three different positions which are causing this tragic disunity amongst us.

All choice takes place in a world of fact, what philosophers call “hard stubborn fact.” In foreign affairs the facts are of extraordinary dimension, macroscopic in size, infinitely diverse and complex. Centuries of historic tradition, encrusted popular attitudes, diverse levels of civilization, diverse potentialities and rates of economic and political development are apt to be involved. Facts impose limitations upon policy, just as the fact of the money in one's pocketbook imposes limits upon what one can buy. It was his acute awareness of the factual limitations on policy that led Bismarck to define politics as the “art of the possible.“

History tends to deal harshly with those who judge men and events before the full weight of evidence is in. The scales are tipped in ways that students of current history cannot always anticipate. Conscious of this, many of our most distinguished Western historians hesitate to write about twentiethcentury history, let alone contemporary events. Great American statesmen share this sense of awe and uncertainty about measuring the fragments of history which they may have had a part in shaping. It was Lincoln who observed that his only choice was to do the best he could and pray that in the end history would judge him kindly. No one can be sure that noble intentions will lead to desirable ends, for the scroll of history unfolds according to its own mysterious inner logic.

Whether there is any excitement in the otherwise unimaginative Article 25 ("On Making Lasting Peace") of Schema XIII depends on the meaning of a reference to nuclear arms. The relevant passage reads:

NATO was born of a crisis, and its trouble today results from the fact that the crisis is gone. The ruins of war have been cleared away. The drama of 1949—of a clash between Germany's conquerorshas faded. The ambition of the Soviet Union to dominate Western Europe undoubtedly still exists, but it is a passive threat, a latent threat which no longer has in it an immediacy and power sufficient to compel great measures of defense, The states of Western Europe are no longer the unconfldent nations they were in the last years of the 1940's; they no longer need rely upon the United States to defend them from the Soviet Union; and the Soviet Union is no longer quite the bizarre society it was in those years of menace.

When Senator J. William Fulbright recently called for an an end to certain myths in American foreign policy he provoked, not unexpectedly, a debate over basic issues. Some of these are issues that Prime Minister Nehru grappled with in his long political career, issues that are neatly summed up in the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence found in the preamble of the Sino-Indian Agreement on Tibet, signed April 29, 1954.

Although the Tibetan treaty expired in 1962, the norms in the preamble continue to play a vital role in world affairs.

Twenty years after the Normandy invasion which sealed the doom of Hitler's Third Reich, the search for the explanations of how and why such an evil regime could come into being and stay in power until it had an entire continent in its grasp goes on. The histories that were written immediately following its total collapse no longer satisfy a new generation of scholars and writers who are determined to unearth as much of the raw truth as possible and who, in the process; are prepared to call into question the acts and decisions of even the most highly respected individuals and hallowed institutions.

With respect to the morality and legitimacy of power a schematic view which is held by many, including probably most Jews, was recently expressed again by the late and learned David Baumgardt (Living Legacy—Essays in Honor of Hugo Hahn, N.Y. 1963, pp. 20-23). The view, summarily put, amounts to this: there is, on one hand, the attitude of a few radical Christians—to limit ourselves to the Western world—who condemn power as in itself evil and sinful; they take New Testament statements like “turn the cheek” and “do not judge” literally. But they are neurotic and, what is worse, unrealistic, for they open gates to the victory of injustice and brutality.

There is need for a fresh look at some basic European policies which most of the Western Powers have, until recently, agreed on. Most utterances by Western statesmen, most comments in print and on the air have assumed, for instance, that the reunification’ of Germany and British entry into the Common Market would further the interests of the West. On these two focal issues the attentive public has, in general, heard only one side of the case. The principal reason is obvious. Dissent obtains fewer outlets when opinion media and policymakers see eye to eye.