Return To the Middle Ages
D URING the First World War it was usual for the Allies to represent their cause as that of democracy, which was defined as the free and spontaneous movement of the human spirit, unfettered by logic. Germany, on the other hand, stood for machine-like regularity and cold, calculating rationality. Henri Bergson and Gustav LeBon grew quite eloquent on this theme. During the Second War, the roles were reversed. This time Germany was the country of blind instinct and wild emotional surges, moving in a kind of somnambulism and thinking with its blood. The West stood for reason and logic, for an ordered view of life in conformity with permanent rational values. In defiance of all respectable historiography, the United Nations were made the heirs of the cool and tranquil culture of Rome, with Christian universalism added, whereas Germany represented the survival of the frenetic barbarism of the Nordic pagans. Even the boundary line was supplied: it was the Wall of Limes in southern Germany, which marked the farthest outpost of permanent Roman settlement. Now that the Third War is in the offing, the boundary line has been changed, but the protagonists remain much the same. The Wall of Limes has moved to the Elbe, a shift which makes naturalized democrats of the Germans, who a short time ago were regarded as the mortal foes of democracy. On the west bank of the Elbe today stands Christian democracy, a sort of Joan of Arc, the champion of reason and natural law, while atheistic Bolshevism, foe of this two-millenial culture, glowers from the east bank. The reader can document this picture from his daily paper. There is nothing new or out of the way about this. The Incas, before conquering an adjoining people, used always to spread the story that their enemies were cannibals and deserved what they were about to get. What the Incas said may or may not have been true, but it is certain that the current representation of the East-West dispute is false. The idea of a unified Christendom with a common heritage was always a myth, and the myth itself was shattered at the Reformation. Democracy, again, is the product of the spiritual individualism and the secular rationalism which replaced the theocratic conception of a law of nature of the middle ages, and is altogether inconsistent with that conception. Ten years ago no one would have had the face to talk the kind of history that is now current.
The European Christian Democrats
CHRISTIAN Democracy1 is a comparatively new political force that has emerged from the chaos of World War II to challenge the old Liberal, Socialist, and Communist forces. Political parties in eight Western European states subcribe to its principles and attend its international conventions,2 as do exile committees from five dictator states3 and adherents from other countries, including Great Britain.4 In Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy Christian Democrats are the largest parliamentary party; in France they are second, and in Switzerland, third. The German Christian Democrats are a majority in the state legislatures of the western zones and in the Bizonal Government. A smaller group in Norway called the Christian People's Party, although unaffiliated with the others, is based on many of the same principles, and has increased in popularity since the war.5 The nucleus of all these organizations existed before the war, but the post-war Christian Democrat parties differ from their pre-war next-of-kin in several important respects. Made up for the most part of younger men who played prominent roles in the various resistance movements,6 the post-war parties are non-denominational7 and genuinely democratic. In collaboration with Socialists and other constitutional parties they are playing an important role in preserving law-limited government in Western Europe, in extending economic well-being, and in keeping the peace as part of the Atlantic community of nations. The Christian Democrat parties have, for the most part, a social and political heterogeneity which distinguishes them from the Liberal, Socialist, and Communist political groupings; they are the only political parties in continental Europe which are similar to major American parties, in that they cut across the great interest groupings of the population.8
Impact of Nuclear Data Uncertainties on Transmutation of Actinides in Accelerator-Driven Assemblies
Abstract The potential impact of nuclear data uncertainties on a large number of performance parameters of reactor cores dedicated to the transmutation of radioactive wastes is discussed. An uncertainty analysis has been performed based on sensitivity theory, which underlines the cross sections, the energy range, and the isotopes that are responsible for the most significant uncertainties. To provide guidelines on priorities for new evaluations or validation experiments, required accuracies on specific nuclear data have been derived, accounting for target accuracies on major design parameters. The required accuracies (mostly in the energy region below 20 MeV), in particular for minor actinide data, are of the same order of magnitude of the achieved accuracies on major actinides. Specific requirements also concern the improvement of minor actinide data related to decay heat and effective delayed-neutron fraction assessment.