For almost forty-five months now, Iran and Iraq have been locked in a tragic and bloody war. Though die number of deaths is estimated in the hundreds of thousands and the number of wounded and dislocated said to exceed the million mark, the conflict shows few signs of resolution or even abatement. Great powers and die small nations in the region monitor developments with growing consternation, but no outside party seems able to put a stop to the fighting.

A public philosophy is the ectoplasm of a political party. Candidates represent die party, but, in a larger sense, they are epiphenomenal; if die parry's principles and organizing concepts are shopworn, even die most presentable candidate will have difficulty transcending diem. In such cases victory is not impossible, just unwarranted.

Amidst the sound and the fury that attended last year's missile controversy came an astonishing development in relations between the two Germanies, one which seemed to go against the prevailing winds of East-West tensions. While Moscow and its stalwart ally East Berlin were threatening hellfire if Bonn went ahead with NATO plans to station Pershing II missiles, exchanges on all levels between East and West Germany were never more relaxed. And (touch wood) 1984 continues on the same promising note on which 1983 left off.

On the 24th of Dhu-al-Qa'da in the Islamic year 309, the 26th of March in the Christian year 922, a man was executed for religious crimes in the city of Baghdad in Iraq. Baghdad at that time had been the seat of Muhammad's political successors, the caliphs, since the middle of the eighth century and was the capital of much of die Islamic community. As a political institution, the caliphate was sunni, modeled on the surma, or path, of Muhammad— at least in theory.