To judge from the beginnings of the so-called Atomic Age, the invention of nuclear fission has had as yet greater psychological than physical effects. The atomic bomb climaxed the psychological warfare against Japan and accelerated the surrender of that country. Immediately afterwards, the bomb threw, by its mere existence, the again peaceful world into a turmoil of fear and despair. Prophets arose to proclaim the advent of a final catastrophe. They predicted the demise of mankind in an earth-shattering chain-reaction. Was it not to be expected? We are approaching the end of our millenium. Our contemporaries readily believe in journalistic clichés and scientific absurdities. The mystic of prayer and self-chastisement has been replaced by the magic of mathematical formulas and physical models.

International law has survived astonishingly well the host of ingenious horoscopes cast regarding its future by magi in many lands. Some have been prophets of gloom and have prognosticated its impending breakdown. Others have purported to see a constellation of circumstances which promised an unexpectedly bright future for the weakling in the laws family. Yet when, at times, such astrologers appear in groups, it is not sufficient to explain their emergence in terms of individual psychology; for, like the phenomenon which they analyze, they themselves are very much the product of their environment. Allowing for exceptional types, they fall into two categories which are fairly closely related to the cycles of pre- and post-war periods. For the sake of brevity, and without disrespect, they may be named the “pre-war” and “post-war” schools.

The name of Vladimir Soloviev, insofar as it is familiar to the Western world, is known as that of a philosopher and religious thinker. This was, of course, the field in which he was particularly prominent. Russia can boast only a few formal philosophers (as distinguished from philosophizing novelists, poets or historians), and among those Soloviev is probably the most outstanding. Moreover, in the history of modern Russian religious thought, he occupies a central position, serving as a connecting link between the mid-nineteenth century Slavophils and such contemporary writers as Berdiaev and Bulgakov.

But Soloviev's was a versatile and many-sided nature, and many other aspects of his life and activity deserve attention and study. He wrote interpretive essays on Russian poetry, some of which were landmarks in Russian literary criticism, and he was a poet himself—not a great poet, perhaps, but one with a strongly marked individual character.

All aspects of the life of an age are interrelated, even when the interrelations express themselves in cross purposes and intellectual dissolution. Whether or not they embody forms and ideas worthy to be dignified by the name of architecture, the buildings of any period are an expression of it. They reflect, in varying degrees, its economic and social development, the enactments of its legislative bodies, the acts of its administrative officials, the decisions of its law courts, the character and course of its wars. They also express, again in varying degrees, its methods of education, its religious life, its natural science, its thought and its art. They are, to some extent, the expression of past traditions and works of the mind which have retained a hold on the life of the period or have been revived by its thinkers and artists, as classical antiquity has been revived again and again in Western European history since the eleventh century.

The part assigned to me today is a humble one. It is not that of the specialist who diagnoses and prescribes for the disease, but that of the attendant who induces the patient to practise the regimen ordered, by persuading him that, repulsive as at first sight it appears, he will find it in reality not only forțifying, but positively agreeable; that it involves the surrender of no habits or activities which a sensible man ought to wish to retain; and that, if only he will pluck up the courage to give it a trial, bc will end by being astonished that he did not take to it before. I am only too conscious of my inability to utter convincingly the reassuring noises which such a rôle requires; but, in doing business with so experienced and wary an animal as the British lion, an approach which allays his initial alarms is undoubtedly expedient, and, not less undoubtedly, the kernel of his apprehensions is to be found in the region indicated by the title of my essay.

The American settlement has created a very interesting situation in domestic English politics—a situation in which there are bound to be developments, mough no one can yet say what they will be. It is still very arguable whether the decision of the nation to return to party politics immediately after the German collapse was a wise one. There are arguments in favour of a National Government and arguments against one. An advantage of party politics is certainly that an effective opposition has an important part to play in keeping die Government up to the mark. The absence of such an Opposition in war-time does not so much matter, for then we have the enemy to perform this function of pace maker. But a National Government in peace-time certainly runs the danger of contracting fatty degeneration of the heart.

As early as November 1943, in conversations with German refugees at Istanbul, I encountered again and again the question, asked with amazement: how was it possible in Hitler's Germany for me to publish such independent views on historical-political questions, as I had expressed in my writings and addresses, without suffering political persecution? After I was released from prison by the Russians at the end of April 1945, foreigners frequently asked me the same question. I shall attempt to give an answer, based simply on my own personal experience.

In November, 1944, I had been arrested by the Gestapo, not because of any statement I had made in my addresses, university lectures, or writings, but because of my friendship with Dr. Gördeler and my participation in conferences about a political-theological memoir dealing with the future reorganization of German and European politics. The Gestapo officials who arrested me all wore an SD (Security Service) on the sleeves of their uniforms.

On some later occasion, I hope to discuss in detail the various problems of German-Polish relations which Professor Hans Rothfels raised in his article “Frontiers and Mass Migrations in Eastern Central Europe” (The Review of Politics, January 1946).

Immediately, however, I should like to clear up the misunderstandings which might arise in connection with two quotations which Professor Rothfels took out of the context of my own publications.

1. Recalling that in 1226 the duke of Mazovia called upon the help of the Teutonic Order, and stressing that he did it “apparently in despair,” Professor Rothfels adds the following footnote (p. 43, n . 43) :

“En désespoir de cause,” as Professor O. Halecki puts it correctly (La Pologne de 963 à 1914, Paris, 1933, p. 47). Other Polish historians have tried to minimize this fact.

1. Regarding the “Mazovian call for help” the question under dispute is not whether or not the duke understood “Poland's real interests” or showed “political foresight.” It is rather the question what his actual situation was or what he thought it to be. While St. Zajaczkowski maintains that the duke was “not in despair” (Kwartalnik Historyczny, XLVIII, 4, p. 843; quoted from a German translation) and while St. Ketrzynski calls the duke “allegedly desperate” and a “benefactor” of the Teutonic Order (ibid. p. 801), it still seems to me that Professor Halecki is more correct in admitting, that the “duke himself acted in despair.” I did not intend to do him injustice by stating a difference from “other” (I did not say “the” other) Polish historians.