Among the truths of which contemporary thought stands in particular need and from which it could draw substantial profiit, is the doctrine of the distinction between individuality and personality. The essential importance of this distinction is revealed in the principles of St. Thomas. Unfortunately, a right understanding of it is difficult to achieve and requires an exercise of metaphysical insight to which the contemporary mind is hardly accustomed.

Does society exist for each one of us, or does each one of us exist for society? Does the parish exist for the parishioner or die parishioner for the parish? This question, we feel immediately, involves two aspects, in each of which there must be some element of truth. A unilateral answer would only plunge us into error. Hence, we must disengage the formal principles of a truly comprehensive answer and describe the precise hierarchies of values which it implies.

On the two victory days, military action on the fronts stopped. But peace did not return, nor does anyone know when it will. Peace is not simply absence of military .ction. It is a state of international relations corresponding to “periods of normalcy” in the internal affairs of a nation. Peace exists, when these relations are dominated by good will, mutual understanding and friendly cooperation.

The post-war world longs for peace. But there is no peace because, among the sovereign states, there is one which acts against peace. This is the Soviet Union. Is it, however, certain that the foreign policy of the Soviets is aggressive? Is it not true that, in Moscow, aggressiveness is ascribed to the United States and to the alleged Western bloc headed by it?

In March, 1946, Professor E. Tarle, an authoritative spokesman of the Soviet government, placed in opposition “the old imperialistic concept of international relations” practiced by London and Washington and “the Soviet conception which is based on respect for the rights of the peoples and their real independence.”

The Argentine question became a veritable cause célèbre during the months before the conclusion of hostilities and has continued its turbulent way down to the present time. An avalanche of tendentious interpretations and speculation has obscured the issue and distorted the facts. There are several definite stages in the evolution of die Argentine problem. There is die internal one, widi reference to the type of regime set up under Pedro Ramirez, Edelmiro Farrell and President Juan Domingo Perón. There is the war period, during which the tugging and heaving had to do primarily with active collaboration by the Buenos Aires government with the United Nations, and there is the later period, in which we still find ourselves, when the role and place of Argentina in inter-American life is the fundamental issue.

It is perhaps of the nature of wars that they should hasten developments endemic in a society and bring to pass in a few short years what would also have happened under conditions of peace, but in a much longer span of time. This at least has been in some measure the effect of the recent war on Great Britain's position in the world. It is now apparent and generally recognized that the situation of privilege if not domination which was the lot of the English people from the time before the Seven Years War—or from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards—has come to an end. Perhaps this change in England's position has been recognized for some while in the United States. On the other hand Americans have perhaps never realized the striking contrast in the past between the standard of living and the stability and security of this island and that of the larger continental countries and centers of force—France and Germany.

At the present time it is not easy to say anything on the German problem which is startlingly new to the initiate in this field. It is all the more difficult for anyone who has written a book on this subject.1 The best I can do here is to draw attention once more to some central aspects of the German problem on which, incidentally, world public opinion still seems to be generally wrong and where it is particularly difficult to pierce the thick crust of preconceived, though by no means incomprehensible, ideas. Passions the world" over have not yet abated; wounds opened by the Nazi monster are, at best, just beginning to close. The memory of our fears is still fresh, so fresh indeed, that only the more far-sighted men understand the senselessness of looking transfixed into this gigantic shell-hole which still goes under the name of Germany while, just behind it, another of the terribles simplificateurs is heaping up the dynamite for a new experiment of this kind.

The United Nations is a transitional organization. It includes in its structure aspects of several types of world organization. The privileged position of the great powers suggests that it is a world empire governed by these powers.

The broad principles stated in the preamble and the first two articles providing for pacific settlements of disputes, forbidding aggressive wars, requiring cooperation in suppressing such war, encouraging international cooperation, and protecting the domestic jurisdiction of all states suggests that the United Nations may rely primarily on moral principles. The fact that there are five great powers, each with a veto vote on the use of sanctions, suggests that the success of the organization depends upon maintaining a balance of power among these states. Finally, the provisions concerning human rights and cooperation for human welfare through the Economic and Social Council, together with the important position given the International Court of Justice, look in the direction of world federation.