Man and their state

I was especially pleased when Mr. Tom Burns wrote to me that
he was interested in publishing in England an edition of Man
and the State, and wished Mr. Richard O'Sullivan to take charge
of this edition. This letter reminded me of good times past,
particularly of the time when I first met them both. Tom Burns
was beginning to spur Catholic publishing activity with his
fascinating and versatile creative energy; Richard O'Sullivan
was not yet President of the London Aquinas Society, nor yet
an authority on the history and philosophy of Common law, but
he was already the most spirited and witty of barristers, an
enthusiastic student of the Angelic Doctor, and a genuine disciple
of Thomas More's Christian humanism. For a number of years,
before the Second World War, we met regularly and worked
together on common Thomist conspiracies concerned with
acquiring some smattering of Christian wisdom and trying to
develop in our contemporaries a bit of interest in it.
Now, after the interval of involuntary separation caused by
the war, then by my mission as French Ambassador to the Holy
See, then by teaching at Princeton University, I am particularly
glad to have the opportunity for a new collaboration offered by
this book. I am grateful to Tom Burns for publishing it in London,
and to Richard O'Sullivan for having generously drawn on his
time to make its style less unpleasant to the British reader, and
also to add invaluable Notes dealing with more specifically
English aspects of the problems I have tackled.