A sentence that caught my eye in Sir Harold Butler's
new book Peace or Power casts, as single sentences often do, a flood of light on one aspect of international relationships. "The first Russian university," he writes, "was not founded till 1755." The first colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were founded in 1264 and 1284 respectively, and in each case the university existed before the colleges. And many European universities, notably Bologna and Paris, were of course older than our own. When it is realised for how many centuries the national tradition of this country was formed, and the personnel of its government provided, by the universities—and how largely, for that matter, they are represented on the Labour Front Bench today— the fact that higher learning in Russia is still less than two centuries old will be seen in its full significance. It is true that Russian Universities produce scientists of the first order today, but govern- ment is based on the humanities, not on science, and the hard fact is that in Russia a tradition of government determined by the wide outlook of the humanities has never been established yet. Nor is there so far any sign of it.
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