One of the most confusing incidents in the history of Roman Catholicism in the United States is the condemnation of Americanism by Pope Leo XIII. In his apostolic letter, Testem Benevolentiae, of January 22, 1899, Pope Leo condemned those methods of apologetics which stressed natural virtues to the neglect of dogmatic teachings and those notions of spiritual direction which insisted on individual inspiration and the active virtues in preference to external guidance and the passive virtues. These doctrines had acquired the name of Americanism in European theological circles, partly as a result of the French adaptation of the biography of Father Isaac Hecker written in English by Father Walter Elliott, and partly as a result of a controversy waged in several European Catholic periodicals. The subsequent denials of most of the American prelates that the heretical Americanism ever existed in the United States, together with the counter-charges of certain conservative prelates and foreign-language groups, only add to the confusion of the historical account. The astute silence of most Catholic historians on the controversy for fear of reawakening the sharp animosities of the time has given rise to many misconceptions about the affair, even causing some suspicion that Pope Leo in some way condemned American national traits or even the loyalty of American Catholics to American political institutions.

There is by this time quite a literature on the war economy. With the one exception of the recent symposium by Professor Steiner and his associates, most of whom are connected with the University of Indiana, all of the longer treatises on the subject discuss the war economy in abstract terms or on the basis of the experience of the First World War. These treatises served a useful purpose and were the only books on the economies of war which could be written at the time; but they now seem unreal, because this war differs so greatly from the prior struggle. The University of Indiana book, dealing as it does with concrete problems of present war, is up-to-the-minute and excellently done in all respects. It does not attempt, however, to do what I am venturing: a brief, overall picture of what the war has been doing to the United States.

No Statesman ever insisted more often or more stoutly that he was a practical man than Edmund Burke. On almost every page of his writings he proclaims his distaste for theory and abstraction. But he could seldom leave a question without a fling at the theory of it. This was unfortunate, for his theoretical efforts, though often dazzling, were rarely convincing. The examination of the body of his doctrine on any subject, taken as a whole, is likely to leave the reader echoing the sentiments of Mr. Pitt, who said after looking through one of Burke's publications that it was like other rhapsodies from the same pen: he found in it much to admire and nothing to agree with.

IT is one of the encouraging signs of the time that Walter Lippmann's essay on American foreign policy has become a nationwide best-seller. The jacket on the copy before me reports the marketing of 340,000, and doubtless by this time the figure has soared much higher. Those who assess the trends of the age should set that fact against the uproar of revolutionary spirits crusading anew for the ideals of 1917. Mr. Lippmann is an essential conservative, a thoughtful publicist not a demagogic candidate for office, and he stands far removed from the Lerners and Laskis. He is more concerned with saving the American Republic and Western Civilization than spreading an ideological gospel among political pagans not yet converted to the religion of ‘democracy.’ He knows, as all wise men know, that constitutional democracy, material progress, political and civil liberty flourish only in peace, and that peace depends on security. Therefore he seeks to discover what is that foreign policy which can be a ‘shield of the Republic’ and a safeguard for peace throughout the world. His book is a model of clarity and realism, composed in a truly Burkean temper of mind. To write upon this high level and at the same time reach a vast popular audience in a politically immature country, is a remarkable accomplishment. Probably no one but Lippmann could have done it.

Every true Frenchman who had the privilege of listening to an Allied radio on Saturday night, November 7, experienced an outburst of hope and an overwhelming joy. The meaning of the North African expedition, its decisive importance, were as clear as anything can be. Yet, a very few days later, the French situation appeared more confused than ever.

In An article published in the July 1942 number of the Review of Politics, I suggested that contemporary learned men who deny the existence of truth, virtue, or beauty, are led into a dilemma. Either they must confine truth to positive science, where the results are always tentative and incomplete with respect to the universe in which human beings have to move, or else they must believe that people generally will be inclined towards good and wise actions even though learning refuses to admit the existence of standards, apart from the rules of conduct that can be derived from positive science. The second view, we suggested, involves the admission that impersonal standards do exist, independent of positive science. We might conclude that the nourishment of these standards by means of the intellect, and with the help of results obtained by science, ought to be the supreme task of learning.

It is now two hundred years since the birth of Thomas Jefferson. His name has become one of the major symbols in the tradition we call American. The personality of the man shows vigorously in his letters, in the results of his policies as a leader and in the restored Monticello which he loved more than any other spot on the face of the earth. We study his personality because of his interest in science, his appreciation of invention, but surely not because of his metaphysics. We admire him because of his belief in progress, but not because he avowed himself a materialist. We remember him because he could see in outline the drama of a growing United States, but not because of his perverse judgments on New England leaders. Those who love America as it is, can see the results of his policy in our imperial domain and in the establishment of political traditions that still seem valid for contemporary life. To those who dream of a society that yet is not, Jefferson stands as a symbol of the new world, the progenitor of benevolent reforms that may yet make men happy. Both the realist and the Utopian can find in the complexities of Jefferson's personality much that gives them encouragement and emotional support. We see Jefferson's work in the living America, both that which is and that which many believe ought to be.

Pre- revolutionary Russia was a rapidly advancing society in which a number of definite trends could be detected. Assuming that this development had not been interrupted by war and revolution, certain conjectures of the effects of these trends might be formulated.

We may assume that without the revolution the political forces of Russia would have achieved the transformation of the “dual” or “constitutional” monarchy, which ruled Russia since 1906, into a parliamentary monarchy in which the Crown would have yielded actual power to representatives of public opinion. The franchise of the Douma would have been gradually democratized. The establishment of Z.emstvos, that is, provincial and district self-government, which, between 1866 and 1914, had contributed so much to Russia's advance in the fields of public education and public hygiene, would have been extended throughout the Empire, with perhaps the exception of some semi-colonial territories; these agencies would have received a significant re-en-forcement through the modernization of obsolete institutions of peasant self-government. The excellent judicial system which Russia had already enjoyed since 1866, curbed during the reactionary period before the Russo-Japanese war, but partly restored under the Douma, would have been expanded and improved.

Mediaeval man lived in a marvellously ordered and disciplined universe. Both reason and faith taught him that God was in His heaven, and if all was not well with the world, it was the fault of man and his revolt, of sin and moral evil, not the fault of God. Through all the ranges of created being, from prima materia to the very infinitude of God Himself, there was a necessary order and hierarchy, for the simple reason that God had so disposed all things. Only man was capable of violating that natural order and its concomitant law. The tradition of philosophy supported this pervasive thesis of revelation, at least without contradiction; and the fact of sin was selfevident: not man's irredeemable corruption and futility, as in the great heresies of Manichaeus, the Albigenses and later of Calvin, but his tragic tendency toward evil and moral disintegration unless sanctified by supernatural aid. This aid would be forthcoming with absolute certainty if man assumed his personal responsibility for the evil in his own life and if he cooperated in an intimate way with the scheme of divine redemption. Time and the secular order therefore could be redeemed, from generation to generation, because God had intervened in time and had interfered with the natural state of man in the climactic events of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. But the redemption of society must depend inevitably on the redemption of the individual human person; St. Paul's “redeem the time for the days are evil” meant “redeem one's self, and the days will be better.” Any other philosophy of reform must lead, as we know now, to the subjection of the human person to slavery, whatever the complexion of the particular totalitarian “ism.” On the other hand, the Christian hope and desire for moral improvement, and thus for social betterment, was and no doubt continues to be the basis for the ultimate optimism of Western civilization.

It is a terribly responsible task to write on Polish-Russian relations at the present moment. It is a moment of dangerous tension in these relations, perhaps even of decisive crisis. Therefore, everything should be avoided that could contribute on either side to excitement which would be equally harmful to the two countries concerned and to the United Nations as a whole. Since the reciprocal misunderstanding has, to a large extent, historical bases, the more realistic approach to the problem would seem to be simply to forget the whole historical background and to look for an entirely new start.

“Russian policy is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” Winston Churchill stated. But Joseph Stalin claimed: “Our policy is simple and clear.” These statements which apparently contradict each other can be reconciled. For the mysterious character of the Russian foreign policy is the result, precisely, of the apparent clearness of its principles. Since its birth, the Soviet regime has always described itself as the standard-bearer of the Marxian doctrine and the Communist world revolution; yet this aim has always permitted the use of the most varied methods. Glaring contradictions in practice were defended by the same slogans and formulas. On the one hand, the Soviet regime, apparently sacrificed Russia to the world revolution; on the other hand, it seemed to put the world revolution into the service of the proletarian fatherland. The Soviet regime utilized the German opposition to the status quo created by the treaty of Versailles as well as the French fear of German imperialism and of Germany's attempts to obtain mastery in Europe and throughout the world. The Soviet regime for years regarded moderate Socialists as its most hated enemies, but later it tried to cooperate with them in the anti-Fascist Popular Front. The leaders of the Soviets sometimes proclaimed that the world revolution was around the corner but that belief has not prevented them at other times from regarding it only as a remote possibility in a far distant future.

The problem of Democracy has today assumed several new aspects. The terms in which the political discussions of the last one hundred and fifty years have been expressed have lost a part of their timeliness; but some of us, failing to recognize this change, continue the fight on a deserted battlefield. In order not to be fighting a vanished foe let us try to see in what direction the terms of the problem have shifted.

Joachim De Flora, the Calabrian Abbot whom Dante places in Paradise as “one who possessed the spirit of prophecy,” had foreseen the year 1260 as the beginning of a new age. And there is asense in which we may consider him justified. History is a continuous process—Joachim himself made the fruitio of one age the preparatio of the next—but there are certain periods that give the impression of turning points.

We Shall describe first the attitude of the hierarchy towards the Vichy regime just after the armistice, secondly the political and religious resistance of a certain number of lay Catholics to this regime, and finally how this will to temporal independence by Catholic citizens (with the exception of some Catholic leaders who did not grasp the significance of the Pétain government) resulted in a general opposition to the totalitarian pretensions of the “French State.”

William Ockham, the Venerabilis Inceptor and the Doctor plus quam subtilis, started his academic career simply as a theologian and philosopher who did not have, or at least did not evince, the slightest interest in political questions. By 1324 or at least by 1327, he had composed all his purely theological or philosophical works of which we have any knowledge. In all these writings there is no trace of any political idea worth mentioning. Even the struggle about the Franciscan ideal of poverty had left no impression on the lines written by Ockham prior to 1327. While he was in England he was either too remote from the theatre of war or (and this seems to be more likely) he was too much engrossed in the construction of his conceptualistic system of philosophy and theology. In any case, we know from his own words that he did not take part in the struggle about poverty—not even to the extent of reading the pertinent documents—before or during his enforced stay at Avignon until the beginning of 1328.

Italy is quite a mystery for many people. If we examine public opinion in the Allied countries, we soon realize that Italy was misunderstood during the “non-belligerency” period, has been studied little since her entrance into the war, is often disparaged for her military contribution, ignored in regard to her political importance, and neglected in the plans for European reconstruction.

The Storm of the revolution of 1917 not only swept away the old Russian historical landmarks, but it also spread confusion among the leaders of literary and philosophical movements of the time. On the eve of the great upheaval, Russia had known what can be called a true spiritual and artisticrenaissance. It was the period of Diagilev's Russian Ballet, of Stravinsky's first masterpieces, of Chaliapin's and Rachmaninov's triumphs, and of the creation of the “World of Art”, a brilliant school of painters. In the field of literature and thought, Dostoievsky's posthumous influence was still strongly felt. There were the trends of religious philosophy developed by Vladimir Soloviev and the ethical doctrines of Tolstoy. There were the writings of Leonid Andreiev and the rising fame of Gorky. Vassily Rozanov, Nicholas Berdiaev and Dmitry Merejkovsky stimulated a deeper and more direct understanding of Christianity. They threw new light on spiritual and social problems.

Most people today mean not one but two things, when they speak of “Economic Policy”. Sometimes they mean the attainment of economic ends by means of political techniques: the “economic” concept of economic policy. Or again they mean the attainment of noneconomic, political ends by means of economic techniques: the “political” concept of economic policy. The first concept is the one the professional economist would be likely to use; and it is the only one current in economic theory. The other, the “political” concept, is that of practical politics today. It is not only war economics—whether of the Democracies or of the Nazis—that is based on a “political” economic policy but also many plans for the future such as, for instance, the Beveridge Report. For the “security” to which this and similar plans aspire, is not an economic concept but a political and social one; and it is “economic security” only because its realization is sought through economic means.

Treatises on political machines in the United States too often suffer from a lack of historical perspective. Machine government is due to factors peculiar to certain periods in American history, and it is doomed to disappear when its historical basis disintegrates. Since the details of this matter have been discussed previously, let us only review the important phases of the struggle for reform. Between the Civil War and the 1890s political machines—some of which had begun to develop early in the Nineteenth Century—reached the peak of their power; these were “the dark ages of city government”. During the 1890s the reform forces began to wrestle with the “bosses” on even terms; they developed organizations and adopted techniques which helped them to overcome the isolation and the haphazard character of their early efforts. During the 1920s and the 1930s the victories of reform became accentuated; resounding defeats of individual machines recurred, and it looked like the beginning of a rout of the institution. To mention but a few: the Cox-Hynicka machine in Cincinnati fell in 1924; the Maschke machine in Cleveland received blows in the 1920s to which it finally succumbed in the 1930s; in New York, Tammany went down in 1933, and whereas the five reform administrations which New York had witnessed since 1871 all enjoyed only one two-year term each, La Guardia was elected to three four-year terms in succession.

By 1910 I had been for five years Mayor of Caltagirone, Provincial Councilor of Catania, and National Councilor of the Association of Communes of Italy, as well as one of the leaders of the “Municipalist” movement against State centralization, so that I was never missing from the Congresses of Communes.