Recently the Bishop of Bayeux in northern France ordered less ringing of church bells on Sunday afternoons. The public had been complaining that the electric mechanism used to ring the bells these days caused “snow” on their television screens. Clearly that public would have its television, even if this meant cutting back on a tradition of bell ringing that was at least a thousand years old.

In The issues of the New York Times from February, 1965, to November, 1967, religious leaders and groups are reported 185 times commenting on one political issue: Vietnam. If a comparable search were done on an inclusive list of political topics, such as civil rights, the number of citations would be greatly multiplied. Most of these statements are on substantive issues — the United States should do this, do that — rather than on the theoretical questions about religion's role vis à vis politics. Most of these religious interventions presume some connection between religion and politics, whether articulated or not. A similar examination of some leading religious journals, for example, Chrisianity and Crisis, Commonweal, Christian Century, America, produces similar results: in articles and editorials, such publications are deeply immersed in direct commentary on political problems of our time.

The past few years have seen a tremendous increase in the direct involvement of Africa's military men in political affairs. Between January, 1963, and early 1968 there were no less than nineteen successful military coups, military-led secessions, or military actions instrumental in bringing about changes of government in that continent. This total can be augmented by the numerous attempted military coups, mutinies, secessions, and plots that failed to gain power or that were foiled before launching. This increase in the political activities of the military in Africa calls for an assessment of the degree to which Africa's military men are accepted as legitimate national leadership material by Africa's masses and intellectuals.

The aspect of China's current “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” that has provoked, perhaps, the greatest amount of speculation and controversy has been that of the 1966 purges. The purge is not new to totalitarianism in general, or to the Chinese brand of communism in particular. On the contrary, it has always been used in totalitarian states as a device by which leadership might strengthen itself in the face of internal dissent or new tasks.

An Economist and a political scientist studying the postwar world cannot fail to be impressed by two outstanding features of postwar development: the expansion of the military and economic power of the Soviet Union and the acceleration of economic growth throughout the world, particularly in the advanced capitalist countries. In this article I propose to investigate possible interrelations of these phenomena.

Aristotle'S attitude and procedure in dealing with moral standards suggest that he assumed the following points: a) That he was speaking of something real and given; b) to be discovered and formulated and, if possible, applied; c) that in fact, standards satisfactory for human life — at least satisfactory and perhaps unsurpassable — had already been embodied in Grecian life and art and thought; and if this is the case, then in regard to moral standards, as in regard to many problems, Aristotle is a preserver and savior rather than an innovator and is like “prudence” as he delineates it; d) that if there is a divine source of these Grecian known and lived standards, these are just and true; if there is not, or if we do not know whether there is, they remain just and true; in any case, at least some of them are “by nature.”