n the one hand, significant advances had been made in overcoming
barriers between nations and classes; on the other, political impotence
and a resulting economic paralysis greatly handicapped efforts to take
advantage of these openings. There was everywhere a sense that some
fundamental redefinition of the nature of society and the role its
institutions should play was urgently needed--a redefinition, indeed, of
the purpose of human life itself.

In important respects, humanity found itself at the end of the first world
war able to explore possibilities never before imagined. Throughout Europe
and the Near East the absolutist systems that had been among the most
powerful barriers to unity had been swept away. To a great extent, too,
fossilized religious dogmas that had lent moral endorsement to the forces
of conflict and alienation were everywhere in question. Former subject
peoples were free to consider plans for their collective futures and to
assume responsibility for their relationships with one another through the
instrumentality of the new nation-states created by the Versailles
settlement. The same ingenuity that had gone into producing weapons of
destruction was being turned to the challenging, but rewarding, tasks of
economic expansion. Out of the darkest days of the war had come poignant
stories, such as the impulse that had briefly moved British and German
soldiers to leave the slaughterhouse of the trenches to commemorate
together the birth of Christ, providing a flickering glimpse of the
oneness of the human race which the Master had tirelessly proclaimed in
His journeys across that same continent. Most important of all, an
extraordinary effort of imagination had brought the unification of
humanity one immense step forward. The world's leaders, however
reluctantly, had created an international consultative system which,
though crippled by vested interests, gave the ideal of international order
its first suggestion of shape and structure.

The post-war awakening expressed itself world-wide. Under the leadership
of Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese people had already thrown off the decadent
imperial regime that had compromised the country's well-being, and were
seeking to lay foundations of a rebirth of that country's greatness.
Throughout Latin America, despite terrible and repeated setbacks, popular
movements were likewise struggling to gain control over their countries'
destinies and the use of their continent's im