Overview

Our world is undergoing immense changes. Never before have the conditions of life changed so swiftly and enormously as they have changed for mankind in the last fifty-plus years. We have been carried along...with no means of measuring the increasing swiftness in the succession of events. We are only now beginning to realize the force and strength of this storm of change that has come upon us. Though none of us are yet clear as to the precise way in which this great changeover is to be effected, there is a worldwide feeling now that changeover or a vast upheaval is before us. Increasing multitudes participate in this uneasy sense of an insecure transition. In the course of one lifetime, mankind has passed from a state of affairs that seems to us now...to have been slow, dull, ill-provided, and limited, but at least picturesque and tranquil-minded, to a new phase of excitement, provocation, menace, urgency, and actual or potential distresses. More and more, our lives are intertwined with one another...a worldwide morass, and we cannot get away from that fact. We have become nothing more than nondescript, political pawns in a "winner-takes-all"...global chess game.