Any large public event in New York City is bound to attract some unstable types. But almost no other subject would be as likely to do so as a public forum on the Holocaust. And on June 3 through 6 a symposium entitled “Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era” was held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. There were moments when one felt the symposium had become a public Rorschach Test: fundamentalist Christians, crackpots of all flavors, Jews for Jesus, slightly manic civil libertarians struggling to get their message across, sweet little old English ladies quoting the Prophets, and, of course, survivors of the campsall turned up. Members of the radical National Committee of Labor Caucuses disrupted Elie Wiesel's lecture and seized the microphone on several other occasions. In part the turnout may have been due to an incredible ad run in the Village Voice, telling people:

Since we decided to retake our authentic names, everybody speaks of a conflict with the Church. This is not the case at all. There is no conflict between Church and State in Zaire.“ While President Mobutu Sese Seko denies the Church-State situation in Zaire is one of conflict, it is undoubtedly not one of great harmony. When a government expels the cardinal from his own country, silences the churches by prohibiting all religious broadcasts, publications and meetings, and refers to the political party as the proper way to fulfill the word of God, there are some very real problems.

The debate now going on in Israel over government policies, attitudes toward a political settlement, and the Palestinian question is bound to have an important effect on the future of Israel and on the Arab-Israeli conflict in general. It is politically important to understand that there has been a tendency within some Arab circles to mistake Israel's situation. The Arabs have understandably come to value unity very highly, although they have so often found it elusive, and they therefore view the deep splits in Israeli politics as a sign of weakness. After all, even in Beirut—the freest city for ideas in the Arab world—a newspaper editor was indicted on charges of attacking the King of Saudi Arabia and another kidnapped for displeasing a political faction. But Israelis view their disagreements in print and in parliament (the Knesset) as a sign of nealthy democratic life and a welcome change from the stifling consensus of the Meir years.

It is not at all clear that Mr. Gastil's exercise should be treated with full seriousness. The question of “freedom” is, to be sure, at least the second most urgent issue of our time, ceding pride of place only to the increasing problematic of our very survival. But Mr. Gastil's painfully pretentious puffery (I said it was hard to take seriously) does nothing to advance and something to confuse our understanding of the problem.

During those ominous early hours and indecisive days of the war of Yom Kippur, many American Jews were surprised by the depth of their fears concerning the fate of Israel. Such Jews had thought of themselves as powerful, detached, integrated into the larger American society. Suddenly they could not be certain that their colleagues and friends shared the secret dread they began to feel: the nightmare of another possible holocaust.

Christian leaders have sometimes seemed to treat Israel as though it presented an anguishing moral problem: “The question has two sides. There are complexities. Jewish military spirit seems a trifle pushy. Think of the poor, Third-World Arab refugees.” One anguishes about sorting out the truly moral thing to do.

The works of Niccolo Machiavelli throw needed light on a contemporary problem, the incompatability of the civilian and military modes of being. With Machiavelli, I assume that the surd between military and civil institutions originates in the abstraction of defense-of-oneVcountry from the citizens' daily concerns.

Machiavelli and other neoclassicists, assuming the Greek and Roman perspectives of social organization, stressed the importance of integrating civil and military “institutions.” A civil militia or “nation in arms” is the form of civil-military organization they deemed appropriate for the task. Machiavelli believed that the security of the state would be insured by incorporating the private everyday affairs of the citizens into a larger context of purposeful communal activity.

The ownership of affiliates of international companies has become a critical issue in many host countries. Inevitably, the issue of ownership has become a serious matter for the parent companies. In the discussion that has developed, things are not always what they seem, or what is presumed to be the case. Reality diverges from several unexamined presumptions.

That host countries take the question of ownership very seriously is evident from the increasing requirements that foreign shareholdings be sold to locals or to the government itself, from the regulations preventing new acquisitions of existing companies (thereby reducing the shifts in ownership to foreigners), and from the moves toward bringing labor into ownership. This last item is represented by the comtnunidad industrial of Peru, which progressively hands over1 to labor larger percentages of the shares, and by those in Europe who advocate that labor take over ownership and control of some companies or industries.

Black Theology is a painful phenomenon in the history of the Church. Painful not because of what it says—although it certainly does not deal in soft phrases—but because it has emerged in an America that, since the arrival of the Pilgrims in the seventeenth century, has claimed to be a Christian country. Black Theology is a judgment on American Christianity in particular and Christianity in general. Ideally there would be no reason for Black Theology. It was forced into existence by the particularities of American history.

Black Theology as an academic concern can be dated from July 31, 1966, when the National Committee of Negro Churchmen issued a statement asking for power and freedom from the leaders of America, for power and love from white churchmen, for power and justice from Negro citizens, and for power and truth from the American mass media.

Five years ago (Worldview, “The Middle East Conflict: A Christian Perspective,” July-August, 1969) I laid out what seemed to be the absolutely essential components for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. These included the continued existence of Israel as a free and independent state within relatively secure and defensible boundaries, the expression of Palestinian nationalism within some form of national entity, and the development of a scheme for joint Arab-Israeli sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem. In the light of conversations with Israelis and Arabs over the last two years, some modifications are in order.

Mr. Gastil's summary of the survey conducted by Freedom House commands assent on several points. Freedom is indeed a comparative word and exists in varying degrees. Freedom does not necessarily accompany, or result from, economic or organizational progress. And there is a close bond between civil and political liberties.

Mr. Gastil displays knowledge of a wide spectrum of political systems and writes in clear prose. Why, then, do his words leave this reader skeptical, with a sense of unreality, as though all that is written bears no relation to what he knows of Africa, the Mideast, Latin America, or Europe? I could not begin to take Gastil's essay seriously without first finding the key which explains these disquieting impressions.