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.

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.

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.

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.

The cardinal principle of political philosophy has been formulated as “politique d'abord”—politics comes first. This is true in the sense that whatever other advantages a country has, it will not be able to enjoy them in peace and security, unless its political order is firmly established. However, “politique d' abord” has little meaning unless we realize that we must also say “gouvernement d'abord”—government comes first. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, was so much aware of this fact that, in his incomparably clear analysis of the problem of political organization, he, in the end, simply quoted Solomon: “Where there is no government, the people shall fall.” In this age of individualism we sometimes forget this simple fact, but history abounds with illustrations, both ancient and modern, of its abiding truth.

World peace, the greatest natural good mankind can possess, is a universal global responsibility. In its attainment all peoples, nations and states should share. Sacrifice, generosity and good will are its vital concomitants.

A necessary and urgent requirement for guaranteeing the ordered tranquility of mankind is the creation of a sound, reliable, and effective peace program. To this must be coupled such practical, juridical, international institutions as are necessary to ensure the application of the program to the realities of the present world crisis. This constitutes for peoples and states their major ethical obligation.