In The Spirit of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church is striving to redefine its relationship with the forces that exert great influence on the life of man. The epoch contemporary with ourselves assigns signal importance to the sciences. To these man in our time looks for norms pertinent to virtually all the spheres of his existence … and therewith for his future wellbeing (cf. the conciliar Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, par. 5).

President Woodrow Wilson spent over one-half year in Paris to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles. Upon his return he submitted the Treaty to the Senate for confirmation. A deadlock between the Executive and the Legislature twice prevented passage of the Treaty. The issue extended to the presidential election of 1920 when many voters supported Warren G. Harding convinced that he was more likely to bring about the entry of the United States into the League than his Democratic opponent.

Tradition has it that upon returning from his first Sicilian voyage in 388/387 B.C. Plato founded the Academy. It is also commonly held that, following the example of the Pythagorean brotherhoods with which he had come in contact in Southern Italy, he intended to make the Academy a center of philosophicor scientific studies, as well as a cult society (thiasos) dedicated to the worship of the Muses. Plutarch points out that “in his writings Plato advanced some excellent arguments concerning the laws, the government and the commonweal. But even more important is the fact that he inspired his pupils to positive political action.“ This suggests the further possibility, hardly ever considered, that the Academy itself was indeed a school for aspiring statesmen — perhaps the first organized “institute of political science” in the Western world.

Edward Lasker, German parliamentarian, was born on August 14, 1829, in Jaroczin, a small village in the province of Posen, the Polish area of Prussia. The offspring of an orthodox Jewish family, the young man studied the Talmud and translated Schiller into Hebrew verse. At first he showed a preference for philosophy and mathematics but turned later to history, political science, and law. Influenced by contemporary pre-Marxian socialism, he, together with his fellow students, fought on the barricades during the revolution of 1848. It became clear to him after passing his law examinations that he could not expect an adequate appointment in the civil service of reactionary Prussia.

Today the American Foreign aid program finds itself increasingly in trouble. The last Congress slashed $500,000,000 from the fiscal 1967 AID budget. Increasing disenchantment has been expressed by Congress in regard to the unified aid program that was inaugurated by President Kennedy in 1961 to speed economic development throughout the world as one component of “the grand design” for an American foreign policy that was to rally the free world.

In a majority of Latin-American countries the coup d'etat rather than the ballot is still the institutionalized mechanism for transferring political power. Some states, like Haiti and Paraguay, are clearly in the “prehistory” of modern political parties. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century the political party with a developed ideology has become a major feature of Latin-American political life.

The involvement of peasants in the rebellions and revolutions of the distant past has been impressive in certain respects, but never acquired quite the importance attributed to it in our own time. In terms of the sheer weight of their numbers, the vastness of the peasants involvement in some internal wars of the past may perhaps never be duplicated. Over twenty million Chinese peasants' were killed in the terrible T'ai-p'ing (1850–1864). Nor was the significance of these colossal figures limited to sheer mass, as the Mexican Revolution illustrates. But never before has so much reliance been put on the peasants for so ambitiously revolutionary plans as in our time. Particularly since the Chinese Communist Revolution, the peasantry has displaced the industrial proletariat as the crucial revolutionary class in the dogma of the most militant Marxists. We have been told repeatedly that Mao, Guevara, Giap, and their disciples have put their hopes in the peasantry and the countryside not merely for radical upheavals through revolutionary wars in underdeveloped countries, but also for global revolution. The role the peasants actually play in such revolutionary wars is among the crucial problems of our time.