From the Editor

     Among the more enjoyable aspects of my work as editor of The Torch is picking the quotation that appear as "Reflection" on the inside front cover. I often look for something that reflects a recurring topic in the articles for that issue, or that bears strongly on a particular article.

     But what to pick for an issue as broad ranging as our Spring 2018 number, ranging as it does from the delights of chocolate (although here we also encounter the grimness of imperial conquest) to the horrors of the Third Reich (although here we also encounter the power of family closeness)? So, I went with the famous saying from Terence: "nothing human to me is alien."

     Carole Levin of the Tom Carroll Lincoln club, a leading authority on the reign of Elizabeth I, turns her attention to chocolate, a rich food that turns out to have a surprisingly rich history, in “How Sweet It Is: From the Mountains of Mexico to the Streets of York.”

     We likewise get some back-story we may not have known in "Charles Darwin: The Formative Years," by Harry Wistrand of the Richmond Club. What was young Charles up to before the fateful trip on the Beagle, and how did it influence what he noticed?

     Frequent contributor Roland Moy of the High Country/Boone club returns to our pages with an analysis of what we preach and what we practice in our social policies, and how the two converge and diverge, in "Promoting the General Welfare: Preaching vs. Policy."

     In a piece that ranges from ancient Greece to modern research, traversing the fields of philosophy, theology, and psychology along the way, William House of the Augusta club surveys some of the answers to an age-old question in "Consciousness: Awareness and Knowing."

     Charles Darling of the Youngstown club, who has written for us on topics as dissimilar as English ballads and railroad tycoons, now leaves the terrestrial behind entirely as he explores "Mars Fever."

     We also have a look at a kind of scientific endeavor; Ted Haas explores the Faustian bargain German researchers made with the Third Reich in "The German Physicians Who Had a Pact with the Devil."

      A different perspective on that infamous regime closes our issue. Our magazine typically features pieces based on research and scholarship, but occasionally an experience-based article has a resonance too powerful to pass up the opportunity to publish. One such piece is "Growing Up in Nazi Germany" by the Winchester club’s Claudia Martin.