IS MITTERAND ANOTHER ALLENDE? WOULD BERLINGUER, ONCE IN power, observe the constitutional rules of the game as carefully as the Chilean communists? Is the Chilean road to power likely to provide a model for the accession to power of Communist Parties in other countries, notably France and Italy, where these parties command a sizeable electoral following, and where they could, as in France, since 27 June 1972, form part of an electoral, and subsequently of a governmental, coalition with the socialist parties and other left-wing parties or wings of parties? Such questions are bound to occur.

It will have been noticed from the present collection of essays by Chilean political scientists and politicians, that the Chileans themselves do not indulge in such prognostications. On the contrary, President Allende's maxim that ‘Our revolution is not for export’ seems to represent the majority opinion in Chile. It is in Latin Europe, rather than in Latin America that the evolution of the Chilean experiment is watched with mixed hopes and fears.

DEATH IS A CONCISE, YET FAIRLY ACCURATE EXPRESSION TO DESCRIBE all that is unbearable in man's existence. In his youth a man may hardly realize that time has its limits. At this stage his destiny may seem to him too narrow rather than too short; as well as trivial, dull and monotonous. These causes of discontent persist, but as the years roll by with a speed which astounds each man in turn, the even more desolating prospect of the approaching end looms up. These two aspects of human finiteness are moreover linked, since perpetual youth would enable man always to appeal to the future, whereas the approach of death limits his destiny to its present mediocrity.