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many areas the carrying on of orderly government unless they were at least
partially satisfied.

The "world-wide revolution" thus was primarily an enlargement of
desire on the part of populations or at least of groups capable of energizing
them, coupled with a fixed belief that change in social and political organi-
zation coupled with political control of economic processes offered hope of
fairly rapid satisfaction of these desires. In parts of the world this revolu-
tion was organized by Communist groups following the dogma of Leninism
and the example of the Soviet Union. Elsewhere, it found other foci. Sub-
stantial agreement on certain objectives exists between both Communist and
non-Communist fabricators of world change: both, for example, state their
intention to lift the level of economic well-being for the masses. Methods
differ widely. Communists propose to defer welfare for a generation or so
while they construct and organize production economy after their fashion.
Non-Communist fashioners -- for example, Nehru -- propose that welfare
and reorganization of economy shall go hand-in-hand. Philosophically, of
course, the differences are enormous. The constant is that of popular
expectation and desire, and not of political pressure for social change.

In a recent book (*The Great Transformation*), Professor Karl Polanyi
insists that the world-wide revolution was caused by, and is a revolt against,
the human cost of unorganized markets and *laissez-faire* economy. His
thesis need not be accepted in its entirety; but the fact unquestionably is

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that, though in varying degree, demand is being made for new conceptions of
economic order within countries or between nations, or both.

II

THE FALL OF IMPERIAL WORLD ORGANIZATION

Simultaneously with the social economic revolution -- perhaps as a
partial result of it -- came the downfall of the old and recognized methods of
maintaining order and economic exchange in world affairs. Perhaps, no half-
century in history has seen any comparable extent of change. In the calendar
of historical time, what occurred was a cataclysmic cascade of events.

Until the fall of the Spanish Empire in 1898, thirteen empires had ruled
the old world; the new world was a nascent community of nations protected by
the Monroe Doctrine and operating under the hegemony of the United States.
These empires, working on the principle of "balance of power," grouped them-
selves into alliances and counter-alliances. In the main they had maintained
world peace (with minor interruptions) in the century following the Napoleonic
wars. The imperial systems in their areas did provide order, administration,
arrangements for economic exchange. Their diplomacy did provide a means
of adjusting disputes. The system left a great deal to be desired. It was not
aimed at producing world-wide social justice. But as an over-all machinery
it worked.

The balance of power system broke down in 1914. The ensuing war
ended the German, Austrian, Turkish and Russian empires. The Chinese

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empire, long decaying, was already in the throes of the revolution of Sun Yat Sen.

The following twenty years released the energies of the Russian revolution throughout the Soviet Union, and of the Nazi-Fascist revolutions in Germany and Italy. In 1939 these precipitated World War II; and at the close of World War II (and in the ten succeeding years) most of the remaining imperialist system dissolved. Japan's ended with her defeat in 1945. The Netherlands and France were unable to resume the colonies they had lost to Japanese armies when the Japanese invaders drew back. Great Britain saw fit, under pressure of events, to withdraw from much of her empire: successively, India, Burma, Egypt, Ceylon, Malaya and small parts of Africa were granted independence. Indo-China and Morocco split away from France, while the fate of Algeria is still in doubt. Portions of the old imperial systems still remain: Britain has large holdings in Africa and a remaining position in the Middle East; Portugal, Belgium and The Netherlands likewise have holdings. But the system of empire as a means of maintaining world order, arranging world economics and settling international disputes ceased to be valid for practical purposes in 1946.

The chief tool by which empires were destroyed was militant nationalism -- the passionate desire of colonial peoples (or at least of political groups able to energize them) for political independence and sovereignty within national borders. The desire was sufficiently strong so that the empires

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previously in control could not govern and maintain conditions for orderly
economic life in their colonies in the face of armed resistance to them. In
practically every case the nationalist rebellions were accompanied by insist-
ence on the part of their adherents that the sovereign independent govern-
ments they demanded, free from the shackles of any imperial master, and able
to choose their own economic system, could and would gratify in some degree
the popular desire for better economic life.

Philosophically, there was a great deal to be said against colonialism
and there is a great deal to be said for independence. Tragically, however,
the product of the nationalist rebellions is often a nation-state so limited in
area or resources that, by itself, as a tool of economic and social welfare it
is desperately ineffective. Economic productivity of any nation save the very
largest depends in great measure on its ability to obtain materials, its access
to markets, its capability in producing, its technical proficiency, all in a
context of affairs which necessarily involves relations far beyond the borders
of the nation-state. The anti-colonial rebellions, and the men who emerged
as governors of the resulting national-states recked little of this -- save, of
course, in those cases where Communists controlled the process. The Com-
munist-led rebellions proposed as a matter of course to bring the nation-states
created immediately into the orbit of the Soviet Union -- actually, indeed, to
bring them in so completely that the emergent nation would merely exchange
one imperialist master for another.

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Factually, few anti-colonial revolutions have been dominated thus far by Communists. Russian additions to her system have been primarily the result of Russian army occupations (mid-European Iron Curtain countries). The Chinese have thus far succeeded only in taking over, by the same process, North Korea and probably Viet Minh.

At present the assumed organization of the world consists of ninety independent sovereign countries, of which twelve are (for all practical purposes) comprised within the Russian and Chinese military empires. The other emergent states are gradually seeking for regional or economic groupings of greater or less stability. Obviously they have attained far less structure and stability than they had as colonies under the predecessor imperial systems. Yet the economic lives of the peoples of most of these succession countries literally depend upon their being within some sort of "system." None of them can defend itself alone, and few, if any, can maintain alone their economic lives, still less satisfy the expectations generated in their peoples. Much of the current confusion is rooted in the groping of these countries for some sort of international structure which will at once assure their safety, recognize their demand for self-determination, and offer hope of attaining that freedom from want which they believe can be reached.

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III

THE DRIVE OF POPULATION: DEMOGRAPHY ON THE MARCH

For undiscovered reasons, the last half-century has produced a current
of population increase beyond expectation. From it comes population pressures
whose effects are scarcely calculable now.

(There should be inserted here a paragraph or two giving some of
the outstanding demographic facts. The staff can draw these.)

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Demographers like other scientists can be mistaken in their predictions; a generation from now it is possible that present estimates of population increase will seem as exaggerated as calculations made thirty years ago have proved ridiculous underestimates. Yet without projecting present estimates too far into the future, it is sufficiently clear that the present population of the world (about three billion) may be expected to increase by at least another billion in the next thirty years. In some areas -- South America, for example -- where there is ample "lebensraum," the result of population pressure will probably be to settle new lands and develop natural resources. But in great parts of the world (for instance, Japan and China, Indonesia, India, Western Europe) pressures of impressive force may be set up. These pressures, if organized along nationalist or competing race lines almost inevitably will collide. They will also strain greatly the new-found technical ability of the world to produce sufficient to satisfy elementary wants.

Both the Soviet Union and the United States (with which Canada is locked by geography, economics and a high factor of common interest) despite their present position as "world leaders" are both "small population" and sparsely settled countries. Each has about 200 millions, each occupies great areas. Population in other areas is increasing more rapidly. The numerical position of both, relative to the rest of the world, a generation from now is likely to have diminished, judged by demographic standards. If primacy is maintained by either the Soviet Union or the North American peoples, it will be due to resources of character and mind; certainly not to force of numbers.

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This deep current of population pressure unquestionably exaggerates many of the international problems as they currently emerge. The problem of Egypt, for example, would be complicated enough in any event. But behind the political problems raised by General Nasser and his associates and foreign allies is the fact that the Egyptian population of 23 million increases by several hundred thousand each year, while its single strip of arable land is hideously over-crowded already, and Egypt has no other ready resource with which to support the growing population.

American policy cannot escape dealing with this deep current. Obviously, no present American capability exists to arrest population increase, even assuming that limitation were the answer. Yet populations fighting each other for "lebensraum" merely forecast an indefinite period of war, if the movement and habits of these populations are to be framed by the racial and nationalist urges which have created and directed their institutions up to now.

American policy-makers inevitably must concern themselves with measures and institutions by which population growth shall not imply a predestined struggle between population groups -- if the American objective of a peaceful world is to be attained.

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IV

WORLD-WIDE COMMUNICATION: THE EFFECT
OF INSTANTANEOUS TRANSMISSION OF IDEAS AND INFORMATION

A fourth deep current which imposes itself on foreign affairs is the almost instantaneous effect which any event or significant idea anywhere has on events, ideas and men everywhere. For the first time in history, transmission of information is instantaneous, and reaction to transmitted information occurs over great areas if it is not world-wide. No problem or stream of events is now necessarily disconnected with other streams of events. Race disputes in the United States will be known in Paris, Moscow, Cairo, Ceylon and Tokyo as rapidly as radio broadcasts can chronicle them. The political reactions will follow as a matter of course. The Russian invasion of Hungary, the British action in Oman, the cutting of the American armament budget, the announcement of a continental missile in Moscow become part of the political grist in Capetown, or Canada, Peiping or Paris.

Equally, a really attractive synthesis of ideas stands a chance of finding a following from one end of the world to the other.

We cannot undertake to solve the problem why some idea-groups prove attractive to many men Profound analysis of this phenomenon is one of the tasks before modern philosophers. Why, for example, did the Islamic faith attract and hold hundreds of millions in the relatively short time after its promulgation; why is scientific doctrine sought for, grasped and used

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throughout the entire literate world today? Why are some thought currents
enduring; others evanescent? What qualities of conception energize human
action? Only the crudest answers are presently available and they are too
fragmentary and incorrect to offer little basis for conclusion. The clear fact
is that whereas the Christian revolution took three centuries to dominate the
Roman Empire, the Communist revolution took less than half a century to
reach its probable zenith in 1951. Today currents of ideas and thought can
be transmitted almost instantaneously; they can probably produce political
effects more rapidly than ever before -- for war or peace, for welfare or
destruction, for life or death, in relatively small matters as in great affairs.
The instruments now exist by which information, ideas, conceptions can have
(according to their force) immediate and widespread impact.

The results of this situation -- it has come about only in the past
thirty years -- can only be guessed at. Two of them at least are clear. One
is that there is no longer a clear line between what Americans call "domestic
policy" and what they call "foreign affairs." An American government cannot
determine its policy in respect to, let us say, disarmament or race relations
without taking into account the fact that such policy has repercussions not
only in the United States but in crucial foreign areas, for example, West
Europe and Asia. A new dimension has thus been added to national action --
unless, of course, the United States is prepared to accept the position of a
self-contained, isolated power -- a practical impossibility.