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Liberalism, as an attitude of mind, goes back at least to Periclean Athens. Liberalism, as a political philosophy, is scarcely 100 years old. It is practically impossible to snare it in a neat net of definition. But its manifestations are everywhere. Its vigor, says Author Orton, is proved by the roster of its raging enemies. Among them he lists: Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pope Pius IX, Professor Harold Laski. "Dogmatists and determinists of the red or the black, defenders of the tyranny of men or majorities, exponents of class war, racial war, or national war, have discovered beneath their differences a common determination to give political liberalism a premature burial." It is still unburied because "liberalism, in its essence, is a part of life; and where it is destroyed, the alternative is death. It representsjthe effort to formulate, as a principle of collective action, certain fundamental dispositions of human nature. As such, it inherits a tradition unmatched by any other po litical principle; yet it is not the only principle, the only tenable position, and nothing is gained by speaking as if it were." Compensating Pole. The other "tenable position," says Author Orton, is conserva tism. In it he sees the compensating pole of western civilized thought and conduct — indeed, "together these principles reflect the polarity of life itself, of all phenome nal existence. Force and inertia, action and reaction, change and stability, the dynamic and the static — without this universal dualism, meaning and reality, on the human plane at least, vanish into nothingness." Author Orton finds confirmation of the deep "political instinct of the English that out of the struggles of Whig and Tory two strong parties finally emerged frankly calling themselves Liberal and Conservative. Each has developed in mod ern times its central core of philosophy going well beyond matters of mere interest or expediency. ... It is unfortunate that no such development has taken place in the United States."
Conservatism, says Orton, may be the guardian of the community. "Liberalism is the architect of the community." "Where in this dies irae," he asks, "can the liberal find firm ground?" His answer: in the recovery of that religious spirit, which was liberalism's heritage from the Christian tradition, until igth-and 20th-century rationalism and materialism destroyed it.
Encircling Gloom. Miss Katz paused. Around the two women darkness thickened with the lonely realization that in that illiberal night they were the only human life left in the world.