The Wheel & the Flame

That the civilization called "Western" had in the 20th Century faltered and sickened was a fact so often reported and so frighteningly plain that men tended to ignore the vitality that still throbbed 'in the West's heart.

Last week, above the clamor of hunger and the echoes of two wars, Europe's people still heard the voice of the spirit that for 2,000 years had made Christendom, for all its failures and struggles, the greatest of human communities. In numbers unprecedented before fascism and war closed over them, the people of Europe expressed a choice by ballot as to how they should order their lives: whether in concert with the principles on which Europe had been built, or the new principles stemming from man's relation with things rather than his relation with God.

Hungry, Italian women (voting for the first time) fainted as they stood in line. Frenchmen went through their fourth election in a year, groping determinedly for a "Western" solution to the 20th Century's contradictions.

Pope Pius XII (of whom Stalin once scoffingly asked: "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?") had stated the issue on the eve of elections. The choice was between "the champions and the wreckers of Christianity." He warned against Communism, which promised man material security and then made him into "a soulless wheel."

Most of Europe was rejecting Communism wherever free elections were held because, at last, the men who led the fight against materialism seemed to have real ized that material security and social justice had to be achieved under the West's own principles of liberty and individual dignity. Where they were defeated at the polls, Communists in France and Slovakia (see below) prepared to carry on their assault by other means.

But the flame that still lived in Europe seemed bright enough to survive all gusts. Europe was still quickened by an en during-thought: "Man shall not live by bread alone."

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