a similar knock-down and drag-out struggle in which
peoples, nations, empires and civilizations take part. Many enter the
contest but only a few live to write their story in the long and complex
history of civilizations.

At the outset of such a contest, the European-Asian-African cradle of
the coming western culture contained numerous political
fragments--kingdoms, principalities, cities, city states, inert peasant
masses, migrating tribes--struggling locally and regionally for a place
in the sun, or for additional territory and extended authority. These
struggles reached the military level in local wars, regional wars,
general wars. In the course of this survival struggle, the weakest and
least effective contestants were defeated, dismembered and gobbled up by
their stronger and more efficient opponents.

Local struggles--in the Near and Middle East, in North Africa, in
eastern, central and western Europe--were trial heats in the course of
which many contestants were eliminated, while the survivors continued
the process of city, nation and empire building at higher and broader
levels. It was only after five hundred years of such conflicts that the
outlines of western civilization took definite political form:--a group
of battle-hardened contestants, centered in Europe, heavily armed and
equipped, intent on protecting and enlarging their home territory and
extending their authority over dependencies and colonies in various
parts of the planet.

This survival struggle continued for another three hundred years, down
to the beginning of the present century, reaching its highest level of
intensity between 1914 and 1945, with contestants from all of the
continents taking an active part. In this present round the contestants
are nations and empires, organized in ever-changing alliances. Some of
the contestants are old, scarred and battle weary. Others are young and
vigorous, recent entrants in the planet-wide contest for pelf,
possessions and power.

During the later years of the struggle, after war's end in 1945,
erstwhile dependencies and colonies of the disintegrating European
empires declared their independence, joined the United Nations as
sovereign states and played active parts in the battle for survival.

African development typifies the process during the later phases of
western civilization. When voyaging and discovery became a leading
activity of European nations around 1450 A.D. northern Africa was
directl