Under the French Third Republic it was customary for candidates for the presidency to make no statement concerning their aspirations to high office. It would have destroyed all chances had they revealed a cherished conviction on any vital public question. Now and then exceptions occurred. So firmly established, however, did the custom become, that a politician's silence on problems of the commonwealth spoke eloquently of his intentions. If he attended the opening of schools and hospitals, the conferring of official honors, and like occasions and indulged in harmless specimens of rhetoric, his aspirations were undeniable. He stood above the noise and confusion of everyday political strife, thus showing his outstanding qualifications for an office that, theoretically at least, existed in a non-partisan world of its own.

From the end of the religious wars to the First World War, the modern state system was kept together by the intellectual and moral tradition of the Western world. That tradition imposed moral and legal limitations on the struggle for power on the international in a certatin measure, maintained order in the international community and secured the independence of its individual members. What is left of this heritage today? What kind of consensus unites the nations of the world in the period following the Second World War?

The international protection of human rights has in recent years become a prominent topic in the literature on international law and on the agenda of international conferences. The explanation for this is not far to seek. The experiences of two world wars and the ‘oppression of dictators’ would in themselves be sufficient reasons for such interest. Re-assertion of the inalienable rights of man serves as a reminder of the truth that man is not meant to be merely a means to the attainment of transient ends. Though the academic character of the many schemes propounded is only too apparent, they evoke sympathy; for they voice widely-felt anxiety over the ever-increasing pressure of organized groups upon the individual, the ultimate basis of life in national and international society. Charters of human rights, suitably formulated in the abstract, have also an undeniable utility value in war and peace. They provide a convenient common denominator for allies who are primarily united in negatives, that is to say, by common enmity towards their adversaries. Once victory has eliminated the unifying element, the functions of such wartime ideologies change. They become ‘artillery of popular excitation’ in the peacetime struggles of world power politics and, like religion in former times, a ‘cloak to shadow divers factious designes.’

Few movements of ideas or of public opinion have been more significant than the Russian radicalism of the 1860's, of which D. I. Pisarev (1840–1868) was the most popular and effective propagandist. Turgenev in his Fathers and Children attached to this trend die appellation of ‘nihilism.’ The Russian scholar Nestor Kotlyarevski has characterized this movement as follows: ‘The radicalism of die 60's was a complete rejection of all the previously dominant views regarding the abstract fundamentals of life and an attempt to replace these views by a new outlook based upon a materialist and utilitarian interpretation of all the problems of life and the spirit.’ The Russian intellectual movement of the 60's represents the most decisive phase in pre-Soviet Russia of that process of the ‘desertion of die intellectuals’ which Crane Brinton has singled out as an essential characteristic of a disintegrating ‘old regime.’ The revolt of die intellectuals assumed in Russia extreme and peculiar forms. A special group, almost a sect, known as the intelligentsia, developed. This group, as Berdyaev says, ‘lived in schism with its environment, which it considered evil.’

An understanding of present-day Finland is conditioned upon an understanding of Finland prior to 1939. The background for the last eight years must come from the early Middle Ages, when Finland became united with the Kingdom of Sweden and carried on more or less constant warfare on the side of that country against Russia. When, in 1809, Russia defeated Sweden in war, she forced the latter to cede Finland to her. Finland was, however, immediately granted die status of an autonomous Grand Duchy. During the century of Russian sovereignty, even though the Finns racially and linguistically differed from the Scandinavian people, they retained their old Western culture, and continued to form a part of the Scandinavian group; in short, the fact that Finland fell under Russian control for over a hundred years made very little lasting impression upon Finnish institutions and culture. In 1906, the Tsar approved the new Parliament Act whereby the old Finnish Diet of four estates was changed into a truly democratic single-chambered legislature, chosen by universal and equal suffrage.

Pere De Lubac's volume, now almost two years old, has only within the past year received the attention it deserves. However, the prolonged silence of theologians is perhaps the most significant tribute that can be paid to one of the most remarkable books of our era. For the almost overwhelming array of erudition massed by Pere de Lubac, the extensiveness of his treatment, and the revolutionary aspects of his conclusions demand long periods of uninterrupted reading, reflection and research, before the theme of the book can be grasped in all its richness, and before a solid and fair evaluation can be made.