The fears of the world today are deeply rooted in the failure of human leaders to find workable solutions for the problems engendered by selfishness and hatred. There was a time — that is, prior to the First World War — when the wise men of earth were telling the people that the human race, by a process of evolution, were steadily progressing toward a higher state of civilization and that wars would soon become a thing of the past. The world is getting better, they said, and soon we will have a utopia of peace and goodwill, which has been the dream of the prophets and the song of the poets.

As proof that this bright outlook for the  future was justified, we were reminded of the progress of education and were told that an enlightened world would know better than to attempt the settlement of international disputes by means of war. We were asked also to consider the advancements in science, that this too would contribute to lasting peace among the nations. Furthermore, it was claimed that Christianity was making such rapid gains in the earth that soon the whole world would become so thoroughly imbued with the philosophy of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount that war would be impossible.

We know too well how all those and the many other claims that were made before the First World War have miserably failed. The horrible implications of these failures did not at first dawn upon mankind. The propaganda machines of  the various nations engaged in the first global conflict saw to it that the minds of the people were turned away from the stark fact that a world had begun to come to an end. We were told, for example, that the war was caused by nations which were not ruled by democratic forms of government, and that in order to prevent another such catastrophe we must now wage war to the bitter end to make the world safe for democracy. This sounded good, because all would like to see the world safe for democracy, for, after all, democracy is the best form of government known to man. But the world was not made safe for democracy. Most of the European world was, instead, made safe for dictatorship. The only real change which had been forced by the First World War was that hereditary ruling houses gave place to dictators; and these were quite willing to, and did, plunge the world into another war. The forces of democracy had actually lost ground as a result of the First World War, and, in the emergency, even these United States became threatened with dictatorship — at least, so said the politicians. In any case, the world was not made safe for democracy.

The forces of science, education, and religion have failed to prevent the second global struggle in one generation. We were told that in a world where there was no want and no fear, and where both individuals and groups were free to say and publish what they thought would be for the best interests of all, there would be no causes of war. So, through war, there was an energetic  effort to make the world free from want, free from fear, and to give it freedom of expression along political and religious lines. It was a noble task, but it failed. Now, while we are enjoying a fitful, uncertain peace, it is a peace that is threatened on the one hand by the fact that so large a portion of the human race is slowly starving  to death,  and on the other hand because so many nations have unstable economies after emerging from behind the iron curtain of censorship and continue to have suspicions and misunderstanding, which are the seeds of war. Meanwhile, fear grows apace, so that even the most fortunate of the nations are by necessity burdened with the maintenance of gigantic military organizations, in order, as they claim, to prevent war, or in case they fail in this, to be ready for war, when they can no longer hold out against its inevitability, occasioned by the fears and wants of a chaotic, starving world.