Conscience of a liberal

WE are witnessing in our day a revolution comparable to that brought on by the Renaissance and the discovery of the New World in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries-a revolution so prodigious that it seems to shake the very globe itself. A half-hundred new nations swim over the historical horizon; hundreds of millions of men and women, long neglected and condemned, breathe the air of freedom, raise their heads and their hearts, and demand recognition.

Great new power complexes emerge to challenge the older centers of power in the West: China, India, Latin America, the Arab World, and in the not too distant future, Africa. What it all means is a massive shift in the historical center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Northern Hemispheres to the Southern, from the European to the non-European world, from the white world to the colored.

Three quarters of the globe is in revolt against the European quarter and we of America are, of course, part of the European quarter. But when we contemplate this immense revolt we are struck at once by its paradoxical character. For it is a revolt against the West carried on with the tools, the institutions, and the ideas forged by the West over the past five centuries.