There is a story evidently true, about a conversation between the brothers Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr as they were returning from a joint lecture at Princeton University sometime in early 1941. The two brothers had gone quite separate ways on what was then referred to as "the interventionist issue" (in Europe), and the debate continued in the car. H. Richard bemoaned the way in which nations had come to deal with each other—by way of lying, cheating, coercion, hatred, fear, aggression and so on. As he talked Reinhold became more and more restless until at last he burst forth: "Yes, but Helmut, don't you know that's how nations have always treated each other!"