upying and exploiting it, and fighting
the wars which pock-marked the ceaseless struggle for pelf and power. In
short, they continued to build up the institutions and to follow the
practices of civilized peoples. This has been true of the millennium
that began with the crusades and has hastened the rise of western
civilization and its extension to planet-wide proportions.

Similar conclusions can be drawn from the life stories of the score or
more of civilizations that rose, flourished and sank into inconsequence
during the previous five thousand years.

Each civilization has had its own habitat, its own life pattern. Each
has had its own languages, laws, traditions and customs. But despite
such local differences, all of the civilizations have had in common
those characteristics which justify their inclusion in the family of
civilizations.

Anyone who wishes to test the accuracy of these generalizations may be
satisfied by reading and observing the events that began with the wars
between Japan, China and Russia, the Spanish American War, the Boer War,
and the revolts in Cuba, China and the Philippines, all of which took
place between 1895 and 1905. The present century opened in a period of
critical struggle between empires, within empires and between imperial
centers and colonial dependencies. These preliminary skirmishes led up
to two general wars in 1914-1918 and 1936-1945, accompanied and followed
by a score of minor wars and a planet-wide rash of civil wars and wars
of independence waged by peoples of the erstwhile colonies.

Three johnnie-come-lately empires played star-roles in the drama:
Germany, the United States and Japan. The histories of all three
countries from 1870 to 1950 provide ample support for the contention
that the central theme of western civilization, as of its predecessors,
is a competitive struggle for wealth and power, aimed at expansion and
exploitation, using war and the threat of war as instruments of policy.

Even under the pressures generated by the innovations and the political
and economic changes of the current world wide revolution, the principle
objectives of civilization have remained constant: geographical
expansion; military, economic and cultural occupation; exploitation of
the newly acquired territories and peoples. Each civilization has built
up and maintained a professional military apparatus and used it as the
final arbiter in the determination of domestic and foreign polic