An historical experiment, begun almost a hundred years ago, is, in various phases and crises of development, emerging from die war. It must be based on its own specific theory, or, to put it more correctly, on its own specific philosophy.

To avoid ambiguity, let us agree to align the historical outlines of Christian Democracy with the two tendencies which developed among European Catholics in die post-Napoleonic period: first, the political tendency in favor of a constitutional system based on political liberty; second, the social tendency toward the moral, economic and political rehabilitation of the working classes.

The American mind has been traditionally more ready to accept the validity of political parties which tend to reflect the complexity of political and economic problems and are not based on any simple ideology. For a nation's mind is not a simple one, nor are its interests capable of simple definition. In a free society, a political party with any claim to national scope and to a lasting identification with the task of solving the particular problems of the country in which it operates, will probably be found to be a composite movement, a meeting ground where different groups bring their different attitudes, a clearing house from which compromises emerge. This is the kind of party to which the United States has grown accustomed. It satisfies an instinctive desire to avoid those clashes on a straight ideological basis which would divide the country and endanger the maintenance of the common foundation and the survival of methods of political action accepted by all.

Something the human mind can hardly grasp took place among the German people during the twelve years of the Third Reich. In that corner of Bavarian-Austrian earth that lies between the rivers Inn and Danube, Hitler's home, the legend of the twelve terrible nights (Rauhnaechte) between Christmas and Epiphany is still alive. The legend tells us that wild hordes ride on horses through the air during these nights, bringing storms, unrest and destruction. The people say that it is dangerous to be outdoors alone, lest one be picked up and carried away into the air and made to join the wild riders above.

The two great revolutions of the eighteenth century—the American and the French had each in turn and in its own way a profound influence not only on the history of the United States and of France, but directly or indirectly on the history of the whole world.

These two powerful currents had a common source in the French ideological movement before the Revolution. The development of American revolutionary thought was of course more closely linked to the English ideology, but there was much contact and cross influence between the English and the French philosophers. Further, the French political and philosophical literature was directly accessible to Americans without intermediary English works. We have only to mention Montesquieu and his principle of the separation of powers which serves as the basis of the Constitution of the United States. Also, the American Revolution influenced in turn political developments in France. One finds the roots of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen not only in France but in America as well.

The series of purges that began last summer in the USSR have again aroused speculation concerning the stability of the Soviet regime. Do the purges indicate that serious popular discontent exists? Do they reflect, as some have observed, a state of fright among the Communist elite? In this essay an effort will be made to ascertain the connection between the recent purges in the fields of political, economic and intellectual life and certain continuing strains and stresses in the structure of Soviet society. Our general thesis is that recent developments merely reveal the continuation of certain long-standing but not serious weaknesses in the Soviet system. The purges are only part of the general effort of the Party to strengthen its control and to deal with these strains.

The second world war has brought about considerable changes in the British Commonwealth of Nations. These changes are, to a great extent, the further evolution of a process which began early in those colonies now called Dominions. The dependent status given to the colonists did not satisfy them for long. Agitation for self-government began early in the nineteenth century and, as a result of immigration from European countries and the example of the United States, became so widespread that it was granted during the second half of the century. Once the colonies obtained a degree of self-government, a reaction set in, motivated by economic considerations, which prevented the urge for independence from ending in separation from England. The colonists were content with jurisdiction over local affairs, to which later had to be added some rights in the regulation of their foreign commerce. The major aspects of foreign policy and defense remained within England's bailiwick. But as the colonies grew into “adulthood” they claimed a share in this last monopoly of the mother country also.

In Men and Saints, a second volume of selections, translated with fidelity and intelligence by Anne and Julian Green, the choice of texts offers the American reader the best opportunity to become acquainted with a mind whose true significance is just beginning to be recognized. It was an excellent idea to have first emphasized the humanism on which Péguy's significance is based, a unique humanism which is not fashioned in the quiet of a scholar's retreat, but rather in the anguish of impending destruction: “It is a dreadful anguish,” writes Péguy, “to foresee and to see collective death, whether it be that a whole people goes under in the blood of a massacre, whether it be that a whole people reels and succumbs in the retrenchments of battle.” Before anything else this humanism is a “resistance,” a supreme call-to-arms.