ic
structure of society are too numerous and complex to attempt, within the
limitations of this general survey, to arrive at an adequate estimate of
their character. Nor have these tribulations, grievous as they have been,
seemed to have reached their climax, and exerted the full force of their
destructive power. The whole world, wherever and however we survey it,
offers us the sad and pitiful spectacle of a vast, an enfeebled, and
moribund organism, which is being torn politically and strangulated
economically by forces it has ceased to either control or comprehend. The
Great Depression, the aftermath of the severest ordeals humanity had ever
experienced, the disintegration of the Versailles system, the
recrudescence of militarism in its most menacing aspects, the failure of
vast experiments and new-born institutions to safeguard the peace and
tranquillity of peoples, classes and nations, have bitterly disillusioned
humanity and prostrated its spirits. Its hopes are, for the most part,
shattered, its vitality is ebbing, its life strangely disordered, its
unity severely compromised.

On the continent of Europe inveterate hatreds and increasing rivalries are
once more aligning its ill-fated peoples and nations into combinations
destined to precipitate the most awful and implacable tribulations that
mankind throughout its long record of martyrdom has suffered. On the North
American continent economic distress, industrial disorganization,
widespread discontent at the abortive experiments designed to readjust an
ill-balanced economy, and restlessness and fear inspired by the
possibility of political entanglements in both Europe and Asia, portend
the approach of what may well prove to be one of the most critical phases
of the history of the American Republic. Asia, still to a great extent in
the grip of one of the severest trials she has, in her recent history,
experienced, finds herself menaced on her eastern confines by the onset of
forces that threaten to intensify the struggles which the growing
nationalism and industrialization of her emancipated races must ultimately
engender. In the heart of Africa, there blazes the fire of an atrocious
and bloody war--a war which, whatever its outcome, is destined to exert,
through its world-wide repercussions, a most disturbing influence on the
races and colored nations of mankind.

With no less than ten million people under arms, drilled and instructed in
the use of the most abomi