In Sponono, Alan Paton's recent play, a message spelled out somewhat clumsily in the last act leaves the spectator breathless. The message is addressed by the African black man to the African white man: “You are responsible for us,” it tells him; “you are, whether you like it or not, your brother's keeper. You must help and admonish us, but you must also endlessly forgive because we are bound together for better or for worse.” This may be defective logic but it is realistic psychology. Those of us in the Western world who imagined that tomorrow or next year the Union of South Africa may break up in the fire of a revolution, or change radically its raciallegal structure know little about the real situation and its extraordinary complexity.

This reply, under oath, by Air Commodore Magill to Pat Pottle at the British Official Secrets Trial of February 1962, distils the essence of the deterrence strategy. In the light of common sense, and especially with reference to the just-war tradition, it also defines its essential immorality.

As a prosecution witness, the Air Commodore was being cross-examined by one of the accused who had invaded a nuclear base in protest and who was later sentenced to imprisonment for this offense.

The flower of human freedom blooms seldom and precariously in world history. One such occasion was the period of the Enlightenment when philosophers from Rousseau to John Locke and Jefferson proclaimed new conceptions of natural rights. Inspired by these new ideas of freedom, revolutions spread from America, France and England through Europe. New nations arose throughout Europe of the nineteenth century as a wave of new nationalism spilled across the Continent. The right of nationhood and self-determination was one of the new doctrines of freedom.

St. Augustine wrote the City of God at a time of trouble for the Roman Empire. Pope John XXIII issued his Pacem in Terris “ to all men of good will“ in an age of universal conflict. While Augustine's philosophy of history includes a conception of an ideal Christian commonwealth, the predominant theme in his great book is pessimism regarding the City of Man. The strongest motif in the late Pope's encyclical, on the other hand, is optimism concerning the power of responsible men to shape the future in a favorable way.

Two paragraphs of Schema XIII, on the Church and the Modern World, have been briefly debated by the Vatican Council and will be considered when it reconvenes. They bring to mind the following parable: Once there was a parent whose son was a chronic juvenile delinquent. Early on the boy displayed spectacular anti-social tendencies and everyone urged that the professional advice of psychiatrists be solicited and followed. But for nineteen years the parent avoided a showdown, only occasionally facing the real problem. Rather, his concern took the form of deploring and attempting to deal only with the manifestations of bis son's underlying mental illness. Finally, in despair, the father took the son to the first psychiatrist who was available for a half-hour interview.

Professor Herman Finer, author of fourteen books on world politics, and political institutions and philosophy, has now written a morality tale abounding with italics, capital letters, and searing words. The burden of his tale is this: In July 1956, John Foster Dulles thoughtlessly provoked a ruthless dictator into nationalizing the Universal Suez Canal Company which controls the lifeline of the West. Then Dulles compounded his sins. He failed to support our closest Western allies by holding the rest of the world at bay while our friends rightfully resorted to force against a Nasser who had rejected an international management board for the Canal.