We observe today an astonishing spectacle. Just as during the worst period of the French Revolution, Christianity, and particularly the Catholic Church, is under systematic attack in wide parts of the world, in the Soviet Union, in its European satellites, and in Red China. These countries are under control of groups which profess an atheistic doctrine. The official doctrine of the Soviet world expresses the belief that religion will disappear; it permits the application of tactics which strangulate Church life slowly, but successfully. Leading members of the hierarchy have been arrested and sentenced; schools and monasteries have been closed down; religious orders disbanded; missionary work of centuries has been destroyed. All this is accomplished by systematic and carefully planned campaigns. Every means of deception is used. In profoundly Catholic countries like Poland, caution prevails; in others brutal terror is applied. And all measures against Church life are presented, despite the clear atheism of the official doctrine, as measures against reactionaries and political counter-revolutionaries; churchmen are accused of being American agents and allies of Imperialism and Capitalism

During the last months of the war, hopes were bright in this country that, this time, not only victory, but also peace would be won. The Fascist nations were being knocked out. The Soviet Union was not a democracy, but, apparently, was willing to enter into fair competition with the United States for the souls of the many nations in a state of indecision; and in this competition America thought democracy was likely to gain the upper hand. A world consisting predominantly of free, independent and peace-loving nations seemed ready to emerge.

In the 1820's and 1830's the romantic movement was at the height of its influence throughout Europe* In its origins, among the Lake poets in England and in the circle around the brothers Schlegel in Germany, romanticism opposed the libertarian and rationalist tendencies of the French Revolution. In its later stage romanticism presented a more complex attitude, its imagination turned simultaneously to the fascination of the past and the Middle Ages and to the appeal of the future happiness of free men. Under the quiet surface of the Biedermeier the unrest of the Napoleonic wars continued to arouse in the educated young generation a longing for change, for activity, for a new sense of self-fulfillment.

At the end of hostilities Hungary was a defeated and conquered country. In point of time she was the last of the Axis satellites to conclude an armistice agreement with the three major Allies (January 20, 1945). Unlike the military developments in Rumania and Bulgaria, the Hungarian Army had not turned against the Germans — a fact which did not improve Hungary's international position in the Armistice period. The country was isolated, with neither diplomatic representatives abroad nor friends among the victorious states. She was occupied by Russian troops, and until September, 1947 lived under the strict rule of the Russiandominated Allied Control Commission, a fact which greatly reduced Hungarian sovereignty, both in internal and foreign affairs. The terms of the armistice were extremely harsh. American endeavors in Moscow, aiming at more generous armistice treaties, had failed. Moreover, the Russians were unwilling to provide explicitly for equal participation of the three Allied governments in the work of the Allied Control Commission in Hungary in the period following the termination of hostilities against Germany.

Three events make the year 1951 significant in the history of the Fourth Republic. The first, and most important, was the national elections of June 17. The second was the reversal of an ageold trend by the vote of financial assistance to private, mostly Catholic, schools. The third was the provincial elections (elections cantonales) of October 7 and 14.

The british elections of October 25 gave the Conservative Party a small majority of 17 members in the House of Commons, although the popular vote provided a majority of 200,000 for the Labour Party. Parliament, however, is the supreme power in the British government and the discrepancy between popular vote and parliamentary results will not seriously shake the self-confidence of the Conservative Party. Members of the Labour Party, less sober and responsible in opposition, will doubtless characterize the Conservative government as a freak and an accident. But British traditions sanction the illogical workings of electoral machinery.