Knowledge Without Wisdom

Modern society has suffered greatly in the twentieth century as a result of secular revolt, materialism, and atheism. As earth made the transition from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, it was plunged into a suicidal destiny never before experienced in its long and turbulent history. Will we survive? Knowledge Without Wisdom, together with the recording of the evolving circumstances, punctuated points, and defining moments of the twentieth century and beyond, is a commentary on the transformation of modern civilization.

The secularism of the twentieth century will go on record as the most devastating, soul-destroying epoch in history. Our modern secularism was fostered by two worldwide influences: first, the domination of Western civilization by the Christian church and, second, nineteenth century “science.” Modern secularism began as a rising protest against the complete domination of Western civilization by the institutionalized Christian church. The incompatible parents of secularism were, therefore, the narrow-minded and godless attitude of nineteenth century “science” on the one hand and, on the other hand, the totalitarian Christian church.

As our planet exited the twentieth century, we saw that the prevailing intellectual and philosophical climate of all Western and Eastern life was decidedly secular-humanistic. For the preceding three centuries, Western thinking was progressively secularized. As a result, the majority of professed Christians of Western civilization are actually unwitting secularists. Religion has more or less become a nominal influence — nothing more than a ritualistic exercise as demonstrated by the Vatican of Rome.

In the 1,900 years since the cross at Golgotha, mankind had been living in a distinctly agrarian society that provided the scaffolding for life in a civilized world. Savagery and barbarism have always been the response of mortal beings to danger and fear. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries demonstrate this in a way we as mortals hardly recognize. Such is our universal denial.

Ancient history records that mankind was not always so primitive and fearful, that hundreds of thousands of years ago men and women lived courageously in a civilization that makes our modern example look savage. That civilization was later known as Dilmun, situated in the southern region of Mesopotamia, now known as the Persian Gulf. So how did the evolving races become so fearful, worshipping just about anything and anybody who presented themselves?

Knowledge Without Wisdom will investigate this conundrum. As readers immerse themselves in the recorded history of the twentieth century, the mystery will unfold and become clear. After reading the evidence presented in this book, readers will see evidence that we who dwell on this planet have done ourselves and future generations a great disservice. Although we have attained a great storehouse of knowledge through the centuries, we have failed utterly to augment this abundance with the requisite wisdom to allow our natural evolution to occur.

Modern society does not recognize that without the thrilling message of Jesus’ life, we would still be languishing in a world of myth and mysticism. Humankind was previously indoctrinated by mythical stories of times during which primitive peoples believed in the gods who go on a rampage in the storm, who shake the earth with their wrath, who strike down men in their anger, and who inflict their judgments of displeasure in times of famine and flood — the gods of primitive religion. They are not the gods who rule the universe.

The ideas of Jesus need to be restated; messages of love and brotherhood, as attested to in the New Testament, must be reiterated to remind us all of Christ’s goodness. It is unfortunate that superstition, myth-making, and mysticism were then and still are today our most cherished reactions to anything out of the ordinary, weird, or paranormal. Man has thrived on this approach, having always been a myth-maker, relying on and prepared to believe the messenger, rather than to deal with reality and truth. In short, we are lazy; we prefer to take our information second-hand, providing that it makes us feel comfortable and removes our fears.

A great power, a mighty influence was brought to bear, to free the thinking and living of the Western peoples from the iron-clad grasp of ecclesiastical totalitarianism and its ungodly domination over man. The rising tide of secularism broke this grasp of church control. Now it has established a new and godless type of mastery over the hearts and minds of modern humankind.

The tyrannical and dictatorial political state is the direct offspring of scientific materialism and philosophical secularism. No sooner is man freed by secularism from the domination of the institutionalized church than it delivers man into slavish bondage to the totalitarian and socialist state. Secularism delivers man from ecclesiastic slavery only to lure him into the tyranny and oppression of political and economic slavery. Slavery is slavery.

Materialists deny God; secularists ignore God. As our planet transited through the latter part of the last century, secularism took on a more militant stance as evinced by so-called political correctness and other manifestations of the secular humanists. Twenty-first-century secularism insists that man does not need God. Yet, in fact, nothing can take the place of God in our society. While we should never surrender the beneficent gains of the secular revolt against totalitarian religion, secularism will never bring peace to our planet. The great mistake of secularists is that they went beyond freedom from the bondage of religious totalitarianism to institute a revolt against God himself — sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly.

There is no denying we owe to the secular revolt the amazing technological advancements of American industrialism and the unprecedented material progress of Western civilization. We all enjoy many liberties and satisfactions resulting from the secular revolt. Because it went too far and resulted in losing sight of God and true religion, however, there also appeared the unsolicited harvest of two world wars and countless regional conflicts resulting in international discord. We must realize that this godless philosophy of human society only leads to more animosity, unhappiness, unrest, social dysfunction, wars, and worldwide disaster.

That the secularists antagonized true religion in order to get their way was not essential. It is not necessary to abandon our faith in God to enjoy the benefits and blessings of the modern secular revolt. The promotion of science and education would have been just as easily achieved by the secularists had they not confronted true religion. Without wisdom, however, they had difficulty recognizing true religion and its fruits — tolerance, social service, true democratic government, and civil liberties.

Without God and without religion, scientific secularism is unable to coordinate its forces, harmonize its divergent and competitive interests, races, and nationalism. Twentieth-century secular humanist society has utterly failed, exposing its inhabitants as a bankrupt society without virtue, lacking principles, ethics, morals, and values — all of the goodness extolled by Jesus of Nazareth. Secular humanism is disintegrating. The only cohesive force resisting the final disintegration is nationalism. And nationalism is the primary barrier to world peace.

The inherent weakness of secular humanism is that it discards virtues and religion, replacing them with politics and power. Secular socialism and political optimism are simply cruel illusions. How can a society be established after the life and teachings of Jesus when it inaugurates the brotherhood of man but denies the fatherhood of God? For modern society to believe it can march ignorantly toward a continuation of the insanity we now accept as commonplace is not only inconsistent with recorded history, it dispels and repudiates the vast storehouse of knowledge acquired during our long and laborious climb from primitive savagery to the modern age. Without God, no amount of science and material wealth will lead to worldwide peace.

The complete secularization of science, education, industry, and society in the West and East will lead to ultimate disaster. During this twentieth century we murdered more human beings than during the whole nineteen centuries of the Christian dispensation leading up to this age. This is only a glimpse of the terrible harvest yet to come if materialism and secularism continue unabated through the twenty-first century.

Christianity has done a great service to our world. But what we need most now are the teachings of Jesus. It’s futile to speak of a revival of primitive Christianity, with the spiritual menace of a galaxy of “saints and martyrs” who were assumed to have special privileges and influences at the divine courts, and therefore able to intercede on behalf of man before the Gods.

The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the Master to all men — and never once ask for or receive material compensation for doing so. In Jesus, the universe produced a mortal man in whom the spirit of love triumphed over the material handicaps of time and overcame the fact of physical origin. The beauty and sublimity, the humanity and divinity, the simplicity and uniqueness of Jesus’ life on earth — all these present such a striking and appealing picture of man-saving and God-revealing that the theologians and philosophers should be effectively restrained from forming creeds or creating theological systems of spiritual bondage out of them — because Jesus was nothing less than the transcendental bestowal of God in the form of man.

Next to the declaration that his Father is a living and loving spirit, “The kingdom of God is within you” was the greatest pronouncement Jesus ever made. Bear in mind that God needs man and man needs God. This is a mutually necessary relationship for the full and final attainment of eternal personality experience and the divine destiny that awaits each of us after death.

The acquisition of wisdom is the as yet undiscovered goal of all who live in this and future ages. For without obtaining wisdom and augmenting it with knowledge, we will hardly survive this new century.

Chapter 1

Transition

Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow creatures than from the convulsions of the elements.

— Edward Gibbon

At midnight on December 31, 1899, London’s Big Ben quietly recorded the earth’s transition from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. There were no excited crowds on hand to witness this event. There were no parades or fireworks. It may be difficult for us, who witnessed the dawn of the twenty-first century, to comprehend the lack of media coverage and fanfare on this event.

This passive transition is not so unusual given the lack of technology and communication during that time period. Apart from the telegraph system, crude newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and mail by sea, mortals had to content themselves with one-on-one communication.

Life at the turn of the century was uncomplicated and blissful compared to the chaos of modern society. The city streets were astir with pedestrians and the horse and buggy. Commerce was conducted in a most primitive way. There were no computers, fax machines, or cellular phones; there was no Internet, instant power, running water, or jet travel. There were just people working, thinking, and living. And as the century clicked over rather noiselessly, who would have imagined the enormous changes and shifts in society we see in the modern technology-charged landscape of the twenty-first century?

There are two questions we must now ask ourselves: Have we benefited from the increase in technology? And if so, why? Let us survey the landscape of philosophy and politics to discover why the harvests of the twentieth century have been so fruitful, yet so unfulfilling.

A serious survey of the last century must first look at the characters who influenced thought in the nineteenth century. This is where we run headlong into Karl Marx (1818-1883), probably the most potent intellectual driving force to impact the twentieth century. Marx is the progenitor of the majority of all that is wrong with our present civilization. We will examine the profound influence this single human being has had over our lives all through the twentieth century and beyond. We will also seek to discover what powerful influence drove Marx to formulate his convoluted philosophy and godless doctrine of humanism. And we will try to understand his mindset and, more importantly, how it influenced society at the time and continues to do so every day in so many ways.

Of course, most so-called academic Marxists will scoff at any attempts to summarize Marx. They will insist comrade Karl is completely beyond the range of simple minds. However, we will use the wisdom derived from the last century’s experience of living under the twisted and perverted philosophies that evolved from his tract, The Communist Manifesto.

Before we begin, it is necessary to understand the following two terms:

· secular revolt — secular (adjective): worldly, as opposed to sacred, not connected with religion or the church; revolt (noun): uprising against authority; (verb): rise in rebellion, cause to feel disgust.

· secularists (noun): a person or persons who profess to be worldly and not sacred, nonreligious, non-church-going.

What these definitions, taken from several well-known English dictionaries, mean to our discussion is that secular revolt is a revolution against God, as well as against religion and the church. Secularists, then, are the exponents of the secular revolt. Is that not what modern communism and its sinister sidekick, socialism, espouse?

Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels

Marx was born in 1818, a Jewish German who was educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. In 1842, shortly after contributing his first article to a Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, Marx became editor of that paper. He continued to write, criticizing contemporary political and social conditions, which enmeshed him in controversy with authorities. In 1843, he resigned from his position and moved to Paris. It was there that he adopted communist beliefs. He struggled to develop a philosophy of social and political expediency, which was designed to act as a bulwark and rallying point for the masses against the oncoming Industrial Revolution.

In 1844, Freidrich Engels (1829-1895) came to visit Marx in Paris where they discovered both had separately arrived at analogous views on the nature of revolutionary problems. The two began a partnership to explicate the beliefs of communism and to organize an international working-class movement dedicated to those beliefs. Their many-sided collaboration had two principal aspects: systematic exposition of the principles of communism and the organization of the Communist movement. Although the two men began with the field of philosophy, they moved in other directions. Marx dealt primarily with political thought, political economy, and economic history; Engels’s focus was on physical sciences, mathematics, anthropology, military science, and languages.

Marx’s influence during his life was not great, but increased after his death as the labor movement grew. His ideas and theories came to be known as Marxism, or scientific socialism, which constitutes one of the principal currents of contemporary political thought. His analysis of capitalist economy and his theories of historical materialism, the class struggle, and surplus value have become the basis of modern socialist doctrine. Of decisive importance with respect to revolutionary action are his theories on the nature of the capitalist state, the road to power, and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Marx and Engels tried to analyze contemporary society, which they described as capitalistic. They pointed out the discrepancies between ideals and reality in modern society: rights granted to all had not done away with injustices; constitutional self-government had not abolished mismanagement and corruption; science had provided mastery over nature but not over the fluctuations of the business cycle; and the efficiency of modern production methods had produced slums in the midst of abundance.

They described all human history as the attempt of people to develop and apply their creative potential for the purpose of controlling the forces of nature so as to improve the human condition. In this ongoing effort to develop its productive forces, humanity has been remarkably successful. History has been the march of progress. Yet in developing productivity, various social institutions have been created that have introduced exploitation, domination, and other evils; the price humanity pays for progress is an unjust society.

It was Marx’s argument that all social systems of the past had been a way for the few rich and powerful to live by the work and misery of the many powerless. Consequently, each system was fraught with conflict. Moreover, each method of exploitation had flaws that sooner or later destroyed it, either by slow disintegration or by revolution. Engels and Marx believed that the capitalist system was flawed, too, and therefore bound to destroy itself. They tried to show that the more productive the system became, the more difficult it would be to make it function. The more goods it accumulated, the less use it would have for these goods. The more people it trained, the less it could utilize their talents. In short, capitalism would eventually choke on its own wealth.

The collapse of the capitalist economy, it was thought, would culminate in a political revolution in which the poor masses would rebel against their oppressors. This proletarian revolution would do away with private ownership of the means of production. Run by and for the people (after a brief period of proletarian dictatorship), the economy would produce not what was profitable, but what the people needed. Abundance would reign. Inequalities and coercive government would disappear. All this, Marx and Engels expected, would happen in the most highly industrialized nations of Western Europe, the only part of the world where conditions were ripe for these developments.

Communists in all parts of the world proclaim that all their actions were derived from the teachings of Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924), who in turn built on the doctrines of Marx and Engels. Most socialists revised these doctrines after Marx’s death. In the twentieth century, Lenin revived, developed, and applied these doctrines. They became the core of the theory and practice of Bolshevism and the Third International. Marx’s ideas, as interpreted by Lenin, continued to have influence throughout most of the twentieth century. In much of the world, including Africa and South America, emerging nations were formed by leaders who claimed to represent the proletariat.

Communists insist that communism was born in the mind of Marx in the middle of the nineteenth century. They further believe it received its first explicit exposition in 1848 when Marx, with the help of Engels, published what has come to be the most infamous pamphlet in the history of the world, The Communist Manifesto. Communism, a concept or system of society in which major resources and means of production are owned by the community rather than the individuals in the community, theorizes that such societies provide for equal sharing of all work according to ability and all benefits according to need. Some conceptions of communist societies assume that coercive government ultimately would be unnecessary and such a society would be without rulers. Until the ultimate stages are reached, however, communism entails the abolition of private property by a revolutionary movement. Consequently, responsibility for meeting public needs is vested in the state.

Many theologians who studied Marx’s writings believe him to be the anti-Christ. Marx’s philosophy as presented in The Communist Manifesto has done its job of causing the blood-thirsty destruction of hundreds of millions of innocent men, women, and children in ensuing revolutions. It has also inaugurated a social mindset described either as socialism or social democracy. Regardless of how we look at these social sophistries, we see the evidence of their origins having been derived by corrupt minds of proponents of The Communist Manifesto. Is Marx the anti-Christ? The answer to this question is irrelevant, as Marx’s mission has been completed.

History of The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto has become known as the first systematic statement of modern socialist doctrine. Written by Marx and in part based on a draft prepared by Engels, this work was derived from the melancholy ramblings of Das Kapital, which was a detailed analysis of the laws governing the economics of capitalism as well as an immense historical and philosophical treatise. Das Kapital, considered to be Marx’s greatest work, was a systematic and historical analysis of capitalist economics. In it, he developed the theory that the capitalist class exploits the working class by appropriating the "surplus value" produced by the working class. In Das Kapital, the theory of historical materialism was fundamentally developed, so it could impinge on the twentieth century.

The Communist Manifesto was the introduction to Marx’s and Engels’s program for social change. It has influenced and reshaped the course of history, not only erupting in such cataclysmic events as the Russian Revolution, but also lurking beneath the subversive antagonism toward democracy and the hostility of many developing nations. It slinks by, unobserved by many, in the sophistry of evolved socialism. It eloquently camouflages itself in so-called social democracy — our latest and rapidly failing populist social experiment.

The Communist Manifesto was written as an inflammatory outcry against capitalist exploitation of the working classes, in preparation for the emerging and oncoming Industrial Revolution and the industrialization of the twentieth century. The Manifesto calls upon workers of the world to unite and revolt against their oppressors: the capitalist system. It calls for the complete abolition of private property and free enterprise through a creeping and tyrannical taxation regime that, when imposed, renders all citizens helpless and in economic slavery and bondage to the ever-powerful totalitarian state.

It further calls for all workers to form into worker communities, or unions, by which a slow and methodical destruction of capitalism and free enterprise would take place, resulting in a utopian civilization where everyone would have an equal share.

In 1848, The Manifesto was published as the platform of the Communist League, a working man’s association. A congress of the Communist League was held in London in November 1847. Marx and Engels were commissioned by this congress to prepare for publication a complete theoretical and practical party program. It was drawn up in German. Then, the manuscript was sent to the printer in London, just a few weeks before the French Revolution of February 1848. A French translation was delivered to the French revolutionaries in Paris shortly before the insurrection of June 1848. Danish and Polish editions had also been published by 1850. The Communist Manifesto had a profound effect in spawning the French Revolution, which was really the first great battle between the proletariat (working class) and bourgeoisie (wealthy elite).

When The Communist Manifesto pamphlet was distributed, all the powers of eighteenth-century Europe entered into "holy alliance" to hunt down and exorcise this haunting specter. The Pope and the Tsar, Metterniesh and Guizot, French radicals,

and German police spies — all of these individuals and groups rallied together to rid the world of the principles behind The Manifesto.

They were unsuccessful. The seed of The Communist Manifesto was planted into the academia of world society. This seed has now found the fertile soil so necessary for the slow cancerous growth of the weed, which was destined to engulf and choke the modern civilization of the twentieth century.

The Meaning of The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto is divided into four sections, preceded by an introduction that begins with the provocative words, "A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism."

In the first section, Marx outlines his theory of history and prophesies an end to exploitation. Identifying class struggle as the primary dynamic in history, he characterizes the modern world as the stage for a dramatic confrontation between the ruling bourgeoisie (the capitalists) and the downtrodden proletariat (the working class). Driven by capitalism to seek ever greater profit, the bourgeoisie constantly revolutionizes the means of economic production, the fulcrum of history. In so doing, it unwittingly sets in motion socio-historical forces it can no longer control, thus ironically calling into existence the class destined to end its rule — the proletariat. As the proletariat increases in number and political awareness, heightened class antagonism will, according to The Manifesto, generate a revolution and the inevitable defeat of the bourgeoisie.

In the second section, Marx identifies the Communists as the allies and theoretical vanguard of the proletariat. He emphasizes the necessity of abolishing private property, a fundamental change in material existence that will unmask bourgeois culture, the ideological expression of capitalism. After the revolution, economic production will be in the hands of the state, that is, the proletariat, organized as the ruling class. Because ownership will be in common, class distinctions will begin to disappear.

The third section, criticizing various alternative socialist visions of the time, is now largely of historical interest but displays the author’s formidable polemical skills. The final section, which compares Communist tactics to those of other opposition parties in Europe, ends with a clarion call for unity: "Workers of All Countries, Unite!"

The Manifesto is the most concise and intelligible statement of Marx’s materialist view of history. Hence, although it produced little immediate effect, it has since become the most widely read of his works and the single most influential document in the socialist canon.

With the benefit of history and the wisdom of experiencing this choking weed, we may now discover not only the progenitor of our twentieth-century woes, but also the powerful evil mind that nurtured this philosophy for more than a century and a half. It is obvious that Karl Marx and his associates — together with the innocent, gullible, unwise, weak and indolent minds of the twentieth century — became unknowingly and unwittingly the agents of rebellious and fallen sons of God. We will call their tract The Luciferian Manifesto.

As the close of the nineteenth century drew near, we can use history as our guide to see that the scaffolding of civilization, having survived the dark ages of Christian domination, was ripe for a new philosophy. The individual, science, and secularism were propelled into a wild melee of social revolution by the thirst for equality by four-fifths of the population — the working class. Driven by envy, greed, and hatred of the wealthy elite, the fertile soil of the early twentieth century was perfect for the emergence of communism, socialism, and social democracy. All that was needed were the radical minds of future mortals in the twentieth century to propel this empire of destruction from generation to generation.

As The Communist Manifesto began to infiltrate European and American society, there appeared many branches of like-minded thinking that espoused this twisted way of looking at humanity and the world. In England, the Fabian Society took root and attracted to it many of the latter nineteenth-century intelligentsia. Counted among these bright, yet weak and indolent minds were many of the members of the arts as well as the physical sciences and the social sciences. Why was this so? They were looking for a euphoric, utopian life — an easy way out.

Put simply, the Marxist manifesto provided and still does provide a declaration of liberty that absolves personal responsibility by transferring all authority to the state. The individual mortal, through an abdication of personal responsibility and self-will decision- making, is simply let off the hook from the rigors of daily living. The cruel deception of a utopian world is not only mythical but also fraught with danger. The progenitor of The Manifesto and the twentieth-century devastation through social and political retrogression —Karl Marx — was the unwitting recipient and mortal agent of this evil and short-sighted work.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the ground was well prepared. It had been worked and fertilized by almost half a century of indoctrination by the words of The Communist Manifesto. All that was needed were men and women of sufficiently weak minds to carry this manifesto into the wider world and spread its evil intent among all humankind, particularly the oppressed and weak of society.

As history records, there have been a plethora of such individuals to carry out the bidding of this plan for the final destruction of our civilization. We shall see during this odyssey of discovery, using recorded history as our guide, the many mutations of the original Communist Manifesto. Future generations succumbed to the sophistry of a declaration of liberty, fueled by envy, enmity, hatred, and greed — all negative and prevalent in the mindset of the workers and the underprivileged. We see how this promises ease of living and, thus, a powerful tool to destroy the "enemy" — capitalism and the free enterprise system.

Now that we have a firm grip on the social and political cauldron of Marxist thinking that globally permeated the latter part of the nineteenth century (particularly in academia), we may proceed with our investigation. We will see how hundreds of millions of unsuspecting and ignorant workers could so easily be seduced into the unions’ and workers’ communities, as the call to revolution was heeded and executed. We will also see that hundreds of millions of innocent lives would be sacrificed — as the slaughter that logically follows this twisted and evil manifesto was ordered by cosmically insane mortal minds. Throughout the twentieth century new fascists arose, spawned from the same hatred, envy, and greed provoked by The Communist Manifesto mindset. These negative human emotions are inherent in our evolutionary genes from primeval beginnings, and simply require provocation.

But in the closing of the nineteenth century, the global population was totally unprepared and ignorant of the evil seeds that had been cast onto fertile soil — awaiting the moment for their new life and the prolific and cancerous spread over humanity and the world.

Chapter 2

The War To End All Wars

Let peace be sought through war. — Oliver Cromwell

The world has been at war in one way or another since history was first recorded thousands of years ago. Savagery and barbarism have been inherent in the human species as it clawed its way up through the evolutionary ladder to the present.

Karl Marx and his followers had simply forgotten — or ignored — these facts. In their rush to discover a utopian world, they failed to recognize the evolutionary struggle of the human being from a primeval beast to the more acceptable, partly civilized creature of the early twentieth century.

By the word “evolutionary,” let it be understood that the facts supporting man’s animal origins cannot be disputed; but neither can the reality of man’s eventual uplift by beings of divine origin. Whereas the mindset of the wise and knowledgeable human being does not contradict the facts and the science of evolution, it is at odds with evolutionism. This twisted philosophy abandoned not only religious belief but also God himself. It fed the secular revolt that took root in the early part of this century, spawning not only materialism but also atheistic science. Combine this with an immature civilization, and panic and chaos result.

Howard Bloom in his revolutionary vision of the relationship between psychology and history, The Lucifer Principle, illustrates this point:

"The appeal of prophets often lies in the ability to paint a picture of an irresistible utopia and to convince us that this better world is almost within our grasp. Marion Keech, the woman who communicated with extraterrestrial Guardians, promised her followers that they would shed all earthly ills and bathe in blessings they could scarcely imagine — after they had been whisked away from our decaying galaxy. William Miller, the founder of Seventh Day Adventism, predicated that God would come to rearrange the world we know and that those who followed Miller would find themselves possessors of a sparkling new paradise. And Karl Marx explained that the elimination of capitalism would trigger the creation of a whole new human nature, one that would flood the greedy dens in which we live with brotherly good will."

(Howard Bloom. The Lucifer Principle. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995)

These foolish predictions by Keech, Miller, and Marx all failed to materialize, yet millions of followers blindly believe them to be true. The point all three missed is simply that the relationship between man as the creature and God as the Creator is a personal one, founded on the concept of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. If all three had been around at the time when Jesus of Nazareth spent his thirty-five years of life teaching simple parables in Galilee, they would have heard these truths. The great problem under which Christianity labors is that so few of God’s teachings appear in the much-edited and consequently compromised versions of the gospels of the New Testament.

Not only is the human experience shaped by an evolutionary process that came forth from savage beginnings, but people also are prone to accepting myth and superstition readily. In short, humans allow others to do their thinking for them. Yet, the simple cosmic truth taught by Jesus was, “The kingdom of God is within you.” What this means is that every mortal has the same potential to enter into God’s kingdom of brotherly association, the same connection to God’s love and truth, a concept that will be expanded upon in later chapters.

With competing economic forces lined up against one another in the early days of the twentieth century, there arose the first of the insane and bloodthirsty events we now dismiss as World War I. At the time, it was dubbed “the war to end all wars.” How ignorant that statement would prove to be.

World War I

Leading up to the declaration of war in 1914, there was much talk during the first decade about the potential for war. Politicians, writers, novelists, and philosophers discussed at length how the great powers of Europe were rubbing shoulders and borders in a frantic effort for economic and trade superiority. Britain, France, Germany, and Russia all dominated during this period. The French were still smarting and held much enmity dating back to May 11, 1871, a day in which German Chancellor Otto von Bismark (1815-1898) ended the Franco-German war, when he signed the agreement transferring all of Alsace and much of Lorraine to Germany. The Franco-German war of 1870 had been the last war between European powers in the nineteenth century, and this victory by Germany over France was etched in the minds of Frenchmen for many generations.

Through inept ambassadors and flawed political thinking, the terror of war was fast approaching. In a public meeting in the Munich Odeonplatz on August 1, 1914, an exuberant crowd greeted the news of the coming war. Among those photographed at that moment of public enthusiasm was the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, then earning a meager living selling his own watercolor paintings.

The clouds of war gathered in 1914 largely because both the Kaiser of Germany and the czar of Russia, who had been corresponding for twenty years and maintaining a cordial relationship, were not able to find common ground through diplomacy or negotiation regarding territory and trade. At 11:00 the night of the August 1, 1914, the Kaiser, unconvinced by these back-and-forth diplomatic messages, told Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1891), the chief of staff of the German armies, that the hoped-for guarantees of neutrality of the British and French were illusory, and there would be a war in the West. The troops at Trier were ordered to march. Germany had declared war on Russia.

Five years of bloodthirsty slaughter of men, women, and children ensued. Carnage, despair, and desperation abounded. When the noise abated and the bullets, bayonets, shells, and gas ceased, the terror of war between man and machines was a spectacle that must have been the penultimate example of the savage and barbaric nature of the partly civilized human being.

The underlying causes of World War I are related to the spirit of unwavering nationalism that permeated Europe throughout the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the political and economic competition among the European nations, and the establishment and maintenance in Europe after 1871 of large armaments and of two hostile military alliances. All of these set the scene for the power brokers of the early twentieth century to manipulate the population of Europe, Britain and its territories, and the United States into fighting a war people believed was simply about economics. Like all wars, however, it was about political power and economic advantage.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic era had spread throughout most of Europe the idea of political democracy, resulting in the idea that people of the same ethnic origin, language, and political ideals had the right to independent states. The principle of national self-determination, however, was largely ignored by the dynastic and reactionary forces that dominated in the settlement of European affairs at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Several peoples who desired national autonomy were made subject to local dynasts or to other nations. Notable examples were the German people, whom the Congress of Vienna left divided into numerous duchies, principalities, and kingdoms; Italy, also left divided into many parts, some of which were under foreign control; and the Flemish- and French-speaking Belgians of the Austrian Netherlands, whom the congress placed under Dutch rule. Revolutions and strong nationalistic movements during the nineteenth century succeeded in nullifying much of the reactionary and anti-nationalist work of the congress. Belgium won its independence from the Netherlands in 1830, the unification of Italy was accomplished in 1861, and that of Germany in 1871. At the close of the century, however, the problem of nationalism was still unresolved in other areas of Europe, resulting in tensions both within the regions involved and between various European nations.

Imperialism

The spirit of nationalism was also apparent in economic discord. The Industrial Revolution, which took place in Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, followed in France in the early nineteenth century, and then in Germany after 1870, caused an immense increase in the manufactures of each country and a consequent need for foreign markets. The principal field for the European policies of economic expansion was Africa, and on that continent colonial interests frequently clashed. Several times between 1898 and 1914, the economic rivalry in Africa between France and Great Britain, and between Germany on one side and France and Great Britain on the other, almost precipitated a European war.

Military Expansion

As a result of such tensions, between 1871 and 1914 the nations of Europe adopted domestic measures and foreign policies that in turn steadily increased the danger of war. Convinced their interests were threatened, they maintained large standing armies, which they constantly replenished and augmented by peacetime conscription. At the same time, they increased the size of their navies. The naval expansion was intensely competitive. Great Britain, influenced by the expansion of the German navy begun in 1900 and by the events of the Russo-Japanese War, developed its fleet under the direction of Admiral Sir John Fisher. The war between Russia and Japan had proved the efficacy of long-range naval guns, and the British accordingly developed the widely copied dreadnought battleship, notable for its heavy armament. Developments in other areas of military technology and organization led to the dominance of general staffs with precisely formulated plans for mobilization and attack, often in situations that could not be reversed once begun.

Statesmen everywhere realized the tremendous and ever-growing expenditures for armament would in time lead either to national bankruptcy or to war, and they made several efforts for worldwide disarmament, notably at the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. International rivalry was, however, too far advanced to permit any progress toward disarmament at these conferences.

The European nations not only armed themselves for purposes of “self-defense,” but also sought alliances with other powers so that they would not find themselves standing alone if war did break out. The result was a phenomenon that, in itself, greatly increased the chances for generalized war: the grouping of the great European powers into two hostile military alliances — the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy; and the Triple Entente of Great Britain, France, and Russia. Shifts within these alliances added to the building sense of crisis.

The United States Enters the War

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) of the United States, which was at that time a neutral nation, attempted to bring about negotiations between the belligerent groups of powers that would in his own words bring “peace without victory.” As a result of his efforts, and particularly of the conferences held in Europe during the year by Wilson’s confidential adviser, Colonel Edward M. House (1858-1938), with leading European statesmen, some progress was at first apparently made toward bringing an end to the war. In December, the German government informed the United States that the Central Powers were prepared to undertake peace negotiations. When the United States informed the Allies, Great Britain rejected the German advances for two reasons: Germany had not laid down any specific terms for peace; and the military situation at the time (Romania had just been conquered by the Central Powers) was so favorable to the Central Powers that no acceptable terms could reasonably be expected from them. Wilson continued his mediatory efforts, calling on the belligerents to specify the terms on which they would make peace. He finally succeeded in eliciting concrete terms from each group, but they proved irreconcilable.

Wilson still attempted to find some basis of agreement between the two hostile groups until a change in German war policy in January 1917 completely altered his point of view toward the war. In that month, Germany announced that beginning on February 1, it would resort to unrestricted submarine warfare against the shipping of Great Britain and all shipping to Great Britain. German military and civil experts had calculated that such warfare would bring about the defeat of Great Britain in six months. Because the United States had already expressed its strong opposition to unrestricted submarine warfare, which, it claimed, violated its rights as a neutral, and had even threatened to break relations with Germany over the issue, Wilson dropped his peacemaking efforts. On February 3, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany and at Wilson’s request a number of Latin American nations, including Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, also did so. On April 6, the United States declared war on Germany.

Russian Losses

On the eastern front in 1916, the Russians staged an offensive. Their attack, designed to force the Germans to move troops from Verdun to the Lake Narocz region, was a complete failure. Not only did it fail to divert the Germans in any degree from their attack on Verdun, but also the Russians lost more than a hundred thousand men. In June, the Russians carried out a more successful offensive. In response to an Italian request for action to relieve the pressure of an Austrian offensive, the Russians moved against the Austrians on a front extending from Pinsk south to Czernowitz. By September, when strong German reinforcements from the western front stopped the Russian advance, the Russians had driven some forty miles into the Austro-German position along the entire front and had taken about five hundred thousand prisoners. They did not succeed, however, in capturing either of their objectives — the cities of Kovel and Lemberg. Losses of a million men left the army demoralized and discouraged. The Russian drive had nonetheless given sufficient evidence of strength to play a large part in inducing Romania to enter the war on the side of the Allies on August 27, 1916. By the middle of January 1917, however, Romania had been completely conquered.

On the eastern front, the dominating influence on the fighting during 1917 was the outbreak in March of the Russian popular uprising against the imperial government, which resulted in the establishment of a provisional government and the abdication, in March, of Czar Nicholas II (1868-1918). The provisional government continued the prosecution of the war, and in July the Russians staged a moderately successful two-week drive on the Galician front, but then lost much of the territory they had gained. In September, the Germans took Riga and in October occupied the greater part of Latvia and a number of Russian-held islands in the Baltic Sea. The Bolshevik party seized power by force on November 7. A cardinal point of Bolshevik policy was the withdrawal of Russia from the war, and on November 20 the government that had just come into power offered the German government an armistice. On December 15, an armistice was signed between the Russian and Austro-German negotiators and fighting ceased on the eastern front.

By the end of World War I, the seeds of socialism and fascism were taking root. In addition to this, the Christian church had entered into an unholy alliance with the state, which would provide the spiritual void into which hundreds of millions of twentieth-century souls were sucked. This destructive spiritual vacuum is at the very root of the secular revolt and the resulting materialism and evil of atheistic science. The latter generations of twentieth-century humankind were destined to experience the full effect of these sophistries, thanks in no small way to that nineteenth-century genius of perverted philosophy, Karl Marx.

Laying blame, however, is not the motive here. The blame game solves nothing; it merely creates a confrontational atmosphere whereby the populists and the reductionists hold sway over rational debate. Rather, the intention is to focus the reader on historical facts. Our history is the map upon which we may reliably navigate. If we truly know where past generations have been, we can learn from their mistakes. Only then are we as human beings able to navigate a righteous path for our future and that of succeeding generations.

The Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, between defeated Germany and the principal Allied and associated powers. The representatives of twenty-seven victorious powers appended their signatories to the two-hundred-page document. On September 1, 1919, the last American combat division left France, sailing from Brest. In the previous months, three hundred thousand American soldiers had crossed from east to west each month, heading back to the United States. Each returning soldier received his discharge papers, a uniform, a pair of shoes, a coat, and a sixty-dollar bonus. More than three and a half million soldiers went through this process. A small group of men remained in France to work in the military cemeteries, supervising the gathering of bodies, their identification, burials, and memorials. An American occupation force of sixteen thousand men was also sent to Germany as part of the allied presence on the Rhine; they were based at Coblenz.

In Britain, those conscientious objectors who had been in prison were also being released but only slowly. In March 1919, there were still twelve hundred in prison and thirty-four hundred performing labor service in special camps. As a collective punishment for their un-warlike views, they were deprived of the vote for five years after the war, both in parliamentary and local government elections. In short, their wisdom in not wishing to participate in the terror of war was punished. This is a prime example of worldwide knowledge without wisdom. This was only a glimpse of the idiocy and legal and political ineptitude we’ve learned to take for granted in the latter part of the twentieth century.

On November 19, 1919, the U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles. This single act sent a shudder through the Principal Allied and Associated Powers that would virtually ring a death knell not only to this treaty but also to the concept and legitimacy of the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles came into force on January 10, 1920, a mere seven weeks after the U.S. Senate had rejected it out of hand. As one of the treaty’s British participants would later write, “The whole Treaty had been deliberated and ingeniously framed by Mr. Wilson himself to render American cooperation essential.”

Ten years later, Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) wrote rhetorically to the Americans, his indignation still at fever pitch:

Your intervention in the war, which you came out of lightly since it cost you but 56,000 human lives, instead of our 1,364,000 killed, had appeared to you, nevertheless, as an excessive display of solidarity. And either by organizing a League of Nations which was to furnish the solution to all the problems of International security by magic, or by simply withdrawing from the European schemes, you found yourselves freed from all difficulties by means of a “separate peace.” It was not enthusiasm that flung you into our firing lines: it was the alarming persistence of German aggressions.

This admonition by the Frenchman was all too true. America had entered the war based on its fear of German aggression and the possible loss of financial power through commerce and trade. The war having been won, the U.S. Senate had no further use for such devices — perhaps the U.S. senators had a modicum of wisdom in this decision.

This planet will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called sovereign nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign powers into the hands of the brotherhood of men — mankind government. Internationalism — Leagues of Nations or United Nations — can never bring permanent peace to mankind. Worldwide confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and acceptably control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent world wars nor control the three, four, or five most powerful governments. In the face of real conflicts, one of these world powers will withdraw from the League and declare war. You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of earth.

During the course of this war, four empires had been lost, the most significant being that of Russia. In 1917, through the auspices of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), the Marxist theorist, party organizer and first leader of Soviet state, Russia fell to the Bolshevics. Lenin was the principal figure in the development of Marxism during the twentieth century. He contributed to it a distinctive revolutionary politics that is of continuing and terrorizing importance. He is celebrated in particular for his account of the proper organization of a revolutionary party, its relationship to the class system, its role in political mobilization, and for his characterization of a new and final epoch of capitalist development that had created all the sufficient conditions for global socialist transformation.

Lenin and his successors in all Communist regimes reigned over their citizens using terror and tyranny to uphold the totalitarian state. In the West, the seeds of Marxism were rapidly bearing fruit as one after another over the ensuing decades, so-called democracies fell prey to the insidious mindset of Marxism. As leader of the Communist International, Lenin was instrumental in enforcing acceptance of Bolshevik organizational precepts and the Russian revolutionary progression upon member parties, precipitating a breach with gradualist and constitutional social democracy. During his lifetime, he engaged in and provoked an almost constant stream of polemic and disputation, and almost every aspect of his thought and activity continues to be the subject of scholarly controversy.

With the outbreak of the World War I, Lenin began to formulate a new theory of contemporary capitalism, which he completed in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). In it, he denounced World War I as a fight among the imperialist powers for control of the markets, raw materials, and cheap labor of the underdeveloped world. Since neither the Allies nor the Central Powers offered any benefits to the working class, he urged all socialists to withhold their support from the war effort. Following his lead, Russian Bolsheviks initially refused to support their government in its war efforts.

He also contended that the innovative and progressive role of capitalism in refining the productive forces was a product of its competitive market structure that consequently ceased when capitalism became monopolistic at around the turn of the century. It then became retrogressive and parasitic upon colonial exploitation, thereby universalizing its own contradictions and preparing the ground for the fusion of the European Socialist Revolution with the colonial struggle for national liberation. Capitalism, Lenin concluded, had outlived its historical mission.

Simultaneously, however, monopoly capitalism itself had, by concentrating capital in the hands of the banks and by rationalizing the processes of production and distribution in the trusts and cartels, created the mechanisms whereby a rational allocation of scarce resources and equitable distribution of the product could be achieved under popular control. Capitalism, in its imperialist stage, had created the objective conditions for international socialist transformation.

So the stage is set through Lenin, the student of the Marxist Communist Manifesto, for the oncoming secular revolt and resulting materialism that, together with atheistic science, would plunge our planet into a suicidal and frightening place.

A “Just” War?

As recorded in its long and turbulent history, all wars have been “just” wars. World War I and every other war and regional antagonism since have been similarly justified. Through the centuries, wars have been absolved by politicians, supported by theologians, and participated in by we the people, who innocently believe the “just war doctrine” and spill our blood on the battlefields.

In the broadest sense, Western culture defines a “just” war as the justified use of force for political purposes. The entire tradition of thought and practice in this civilization is aimed at setting limits and determining when the use of force is justified. The components and expressions of just war include religious and philosophical moral thought, legal theory, domestic and international customary and positive law, and military theory. Theological ethicists use the term primarily to refer to that component of the broader tradition derived from Christian theological sources, and Roman Catholic authors typically narrow the meaning still more when they speak of the “just war doctrine” of Catholic moral theology. Christianity has embraced for centuries the concept of a just war, providing the war furthers Christianity. This is evident from the Vatican back through to the crusades. Many idealists during this and preceding centuries have asked the same question: Why is war necessary? The only answer that makes any sense, even to the partly civilized mind of the twentieth century, is that legal theory and political expediency make it so. In other words, we simply abdicate all responsibility to the state represented by the government of the day, then blindly follow the doctrine that is most expedient to the political leadership in the prosecution of their assumption of our wishes. Have you or anyone you know ever prayed or petitioned for war? Have you or any one you know ever been asked to cast a popular vote in favor of war?

The answer to these questions speaks volumes.

More than nine million soldiers, sailors, and airmen lost their lives in the World War I. An additional five million civilians also perished between 1914 and 1919. Seven hundred fifty thousand German civilians died during the Allied naval blockade. Men such as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), Winston Churchill (1874-1965), Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), Erwin Rommel (1891-1944), Georgy Zhukov (18961974), Bernard Law Montgomery (1887-1976), and Maurice Gustave Gamelin (1872-1958) all served as soldiers in the trenches during this war. It is interesting that these future protagonists would serve their apprenticeships in this war and go on to play such a major part in the next. Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) volunteered and served with the French as a Vietnamese orderly in World War I. Harold MacMillan (1894-1986), who later became prime minister of Britain, also served and was wounded on the western front.

The Federal Reserve System

There is one more piece to the puzzle that needs to be recognized to see clearly the emerging kaleidoscope of the twentieth century. A piece of American legislation was shepherded through the U.S. Congress by Woodrow Wilson and Carter Glass (1858-1946) of Virginia late one night just before Christmas 1913. It would become the infamous Federal Reserve System. True democracy slipped from the grasp of American citizens on that fateful night. Commonly known as “the Fed,” this system was foisted on the American people without their consent or blessing. It would prove to be the nemesis of the American way of life from that day forward.

In a later chapter, we will take a more detailed look at how this vague and shadowy yet controlling system will impact not only the United States but the rest of the world as well. It not only becomes grossly misunderstood but also has a great effect on the emerging global economy. Several aborted attempts to introduce a central banking system had been experienced in this great nation’s history. With several assassinations and coups having been perpetrated up to 1913, the United States had warded off all attempts from a hijacking of the fiscal policy mechanism. Materialism fueled by greed and power did finally triumph over the high ideals that the founding fathers of almost two centuries earlier — inspired by divine and insightful guidance and imbued with wisdom and a vision of the future of this great nation — brought into temporal existence through the Constitution and the accompanying Bill of Rights.

As we shall see, the unfolding pattern of each chapter of the twentieth century is a repeat, albeit in different terms, of previous mistakes and unwise paths. Only time will tell if the present and future generations have learned anything from the blood-soaked pages of history. Only when a certain level of wisdom has been attained can the pattern be broken and plans made for a future that not only encompasses all people, but also provides a rich and fulfilling life based on virtues, families, and a spiritual connection to the First Source and Center — God.

Chapter 3

Post World War I

Evils which are patiently endured and which make them seem inevitable become intolerable once the idea of escape from them is suggested. — Alexis de Tocqueville

After the horrors of World War I, the 1920s seemed to augur a long era of international stability, liberal constitutionalism, and economic prosperity — but serious diplomatic, political, and economic problems remained unsolved. The Great Depression of the 1930s brought these problems to the fore and helped create an environment in which militaristic authoritarianism flourished.

The 1920s

Between 1920 and 1929, an uneasy peace developed as strong nations rubbed shoulders and borders vied for economic superiority through commerce and trade. National sovereignty was in full cry as each nation flexed its economic muscle to demonstrate strength and prosperity. In the United States, it was the “Gatsby” era during which people danced the Charleston and consumed the hard liquor of prohibition.

The parties for the elite of society attained levels of luxury and degeneracy, fueling the fires of envy and enmity among the struggling working classes. During this period, small fortunes were won and lost trading shares and other instruments of financial manipulation on stock markets worldwide. It was during this era of absolute opulence that materialism really took hold and spread its tentacles throughout Western society. This party atmosphere, enjoyed by revelers of the rich and famous, continued unabated until 1929.

With a greatly overheated New York stock market, Wall Street and other powerful bankers decided all at once the party should end. What ensued would become known as the Great Depression. At this defining moment, the world would see the new players of the next era emerge. They would be Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), and Joseph Stalin (1879-1915) on one hand, and Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), and Hirohito (1901-1989) on the other.

The future allies made up a strange combination of bedfellows represented by Churchill and Roosevelt, from so-called Western democracies, and Stalin, from Soviet Russia, which by now was soaked in the blood-purging of dissidents from the revolution. Trade was the game then, as it had always been, and the great powers of Europe, Japan, and America were all keen to gain the superior position which would feed the materialistic bent of their consumer-hungry populations. Soviet Russia had a different agenda: The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx had been modified and fashioned to the modern Soviet mindset, which demanded that all nations and their people bow to the "superior" philosophy of communism.

History eloquently records that whenever a void appears in the social or religious structure of evolving civilization, there always appears a dictator or dictators fueled by power and greed who will readily fill these voids. And so we view the circumstances prevalent between World War I and World War II as being ideal for the clouds of destruction and carnage to once again gather.

International agreements reached during the 1920s appeared to portend future peace. The Washington Conference in 1921 and 1922 fixed the ratio of capital ships among the powers and declared open and equal access to China. The Locarno Pact (1925) and the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) presented the prospect of arbitration as an alternative to force in Europe. Meanwhile, the League of Nations, which had been established in 1919, provided procedures designed to isolate any would-be aggressor and promote disarmament. The United States did not join the League.

Despite the portents for peace, Italy, Germany, and Japan remained dissatisfied nations in which dangerous tendencies toward bellicose nationalism threatened constitutional government and world order.

In Italy, which had obtained little for its efforts on the victorious side in World War I, internal disorder combined with diplomatic frustration to overturn in 1922 the fragile, shallow-rooted parliamentary system in favor of the Fascist movement of Benito Mussolini. Harboring territorial ambitions, Mussolini established a corporate state founded on chauvinistic nationalism.

The harsh terms imposed on Germany at the end of World War I by the Versailles Treaty were deeply resented in that nation. The democratic Weimar Republic, as a product of German defeat, bore the onus of association with the treaty. Antidemocratic and violently nationalistic right-wing organizations and even private armies, such as the virulently anti-Semitic storm troopers of Adolf Hitler, flourished immediately after the war.

Like Italy, Japan had been on the winning side in World War I. Many Japanese were also dissatisfied with their country’s international status, believing that Japan should be the dominant power in East Asia. This view was particularly common among military officers participating in a revival of nationalism incorporating Shinto, emperor worship, and glorification of warrior virtues. Although Japan had a liberal, pro-Western government during the 1920s, the military remained influential. From about 1927, nationalistic military officers began appearing in cabinet posts and pressing for a more aggressive China policy.

Depression and Frustration

Optimism thrived during the prosperity of the 1920s, but it was a prosperity flawed by, among other things, over-extension of credit and inadequate worker purchasing power. When economic well-being gave way to depression in 1929, the shock discredited constitutional government in those nations lacking a strong liberal tradition and already bedeviled by frustrated nationalists. Leaders complained in Germany, Italy, and Japan that their nations did not have fair access to raw materials, markets, and capital investment areas, all of which were necessary for their economic health. They argued that their nations were the victims of economic warfare with its protective tariffs, managed currencies, and cutthroat competition, and that they had been left behind in the race for economic self-sufficiency and a favorable balance of trade. They made it plain that they would fight, if necessary, for a better economic status.

Because they felt that democracy had failed, the people of those countries looked with increasing favor on antidemocratic elements that glorified war as the means of national salvation. In Italy, Mussolini’s cries that Italians needed both colonies and glory struck a responsive chord. In Germany, Hitler’s National Socialists gained power in 1933. Meanwhile, Japanese militarists won a preponderant influence in the inner circle of their government.

The Great Depression

The depression of the 1930s shook capitalism to its foundations and shaped the public attitudes of people for generations. The shock was so great because it contradicted long-held beliefs in the unlimited possibilities of expansion. The depression made the Western world ripe for revolution as every political faction in society looked frantically for a cure. Finding a cure without determining the causes, however, was difficult. In fact, no economist has ever thoroughly explained why the disaster of 1929 to 1932 came about.

One of the most notable attempts to explain this disaster was made by John Kenneth Galbraith in his book The Great Crash, 1929, published in 1955. He pointed to five significant factors:

1. An extremely unequal distribution of incomes limited the consumer goods market. Most people were not making enough money to buy the goods they manufactured.

2. There was an enormous amount of fraud and corruption in big business and in the marketing of stocks and bonds. The prosperity of Wall Street consisted largely of paper that was not backed up by real wealth.

3. The banking structure, made up of too many banks, had acted foolishly in making loans. When bad times came, the loans could not be called in, and many people lost their savings as a result.

4. Foreign nations that had borrowed money from the United States could not repay their loans. This, coupled with high American trade barriers, damaged their economies because they could not send their exports to the United States at a profit.

5. The amount of information on the operation of the whole economy was much less adequate than it is today. People, even experts, were not as able to spot trends in industrial output, investment, consumer buying, and other factors that are now studied closely.

What Happened

On October 24, 1929, the complete collapse of the stock market began; about 13 million shares of stock were sold. Tuesday, October 29, known ever since as Black Tuesday, extended the damage; more than 16 million shares were sold. The value of most shares fell sharply, precipitating financial ruin and a state of panic.

There had been financial panics before, and there have been some since, but never did a collapse in the market have such a devastating and long-term effect. Like a snowball rolling downhill, it gathered momentum and swept away the whole economy before it. Businesses closed, putting millions out of work. Banks failed by the hundreds. Wages for those still fortunate enough to have work fell precipitously. The value of money decreased as the demand for goods declined.

Most of the agricultural segment of the economy had been in serious trouble for years. With the arrival of the depression, it was nearly eliminated altogether, and the drought that created the 1930s Great Plains Dust Bowl compounded the damage.

Government itself was sorely pressed for income at all levels as tax revenues fell, and government at that time was much more limited in its ability to respond to economic crises than it is today. The international structure of world trade collapsed, and each nation sought to protect its own industrial base by imposing high tariffs on imported goods. This only made matters worse.

By the fall of 1931, the international gold standard had collapsed, further damaging any hope for the recovery of trade. This started a series of currency devaluations in several countries, because these nations realized that a devalued currency posed at least a temporary advantage in the struggle to find markets for their goods.

The economic depression that beset the United States and other countries in the 1930s was unique in its magnitude and its consequences. At the depth of the depression, in 1933, one American worker in every four was out of a job. In other countries, unemployment ranged between 15 percent and 25 percent of the labor force. The great industrial slump continued throughout the 1930s, shaking the foundations of Western capitalism.

Economic Aspects

President Calvin Coolidge had said during the long prosperity of the 1920s that “the business of America is business.” Despite the seeming business prosperity of the 1920s, however, there were serious economic weak spots, a chief one being depression in the agricultural sector. Also depressed were such industries as coal mining, railroads, and textiles. Throughout the 1920s, U.S. banks had failed, an average of six hundred a year, as had thousands of other business firms. By 1928, the construction boom was over. The spectacular rise in prices on the stock market from 1924 to 1929 bore little relation to actual economic conditions. In fact, the boom in the stock market and in real estate, along with the expansion in credit (created, in part, by low-paid workers buying on credit) and high profits for a few industries, concealed basic problems. Thus, the U.S. stock-market crash that occurred in October 1929, with huge losses, was not the fundamental cause of the Great Depression — although the crash sparked and certainly marked the beginning of the most traumatic economic period of modern times.

By 1930, the slump was apparent, but few people expected it to persist; previous financial panics and depressions had reversed in a year or two. The usual forces of economic expansion had vanished, however. Technology had eliminated more industrial jobs than it had created; the supply of goods continued to exceed demand; the world market system was basically unsound. The high tariffs of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act (1930) intensified the downturn. As business failures increased, unemployment soared, and people with dwindling incomes nonetheless had to pay their creditors, it was apparent that the United States was in the grip of economic breakdown. Most European countries were hit even harder, because they had not yet fully recovered from the ravages of World War I.