No one can look at the history of Western civilization during the present century without feeling dismayed at the spectacle of what modern man has done with his immense resources of new knowledge and new wealth and new power. And if we go back to the nineteenth century and read the words of the scientists and the social reformers or the liberal idealists and realize the mood of unbounded hope and enthusiasm in which this movement of world change was launched, the contrast is even more painful. For not only have we failed to realize the ideals of the nineteenth...

The existence of Europe is the basis of the historical development of the modern world, and it is only in relation to that fact that the development of each particular state can be understood. Nevertheless it is a submerged reality of which the majority of men are only half conscious. For the last century and more, the whole trend of education and politics and public opinion has tended to develop the consciousness of nationality and to stress the importance of the nation-state, while leaving Europe in the background as a vague abstraction or as nothing more than a geographical expression....

The question of the nature of Europe—of the relations of the European states to one another, and of the parts to the whole—has always been the great problem in all attempts to establish an international order. But the concept of Europe has usually been taken for granted in international discussion. It is seldom defined, and when defined, it has usually been only in a superficial way.

In the past this did not matter, because the international community was regarded as practically identical with the European community, and the law of nations was in practice simply the body of...

The difficulties imposed on the European society of peoples by the inadequacies of the European system have nowhere been greater than in Central Europe, above all in the German lands. Ever since the Middle Ages Germany and Austria have been a kind of microcosm of Europe—a society of peoples with a common culture, but politically divided and continually disturbed by internal and external wars. Moreover the two problems are so intimately connected with one another that it is hardly too much to say that the fate of Germany is the fate of Europe, and that the very existence of...

In the past, the European, society of nations extended far beyond the limit of what is generally known as Western Europe. It included: a number of kingdoms and nationalities which shared the intellectual and religious traditions of the West and made their contribution to the common stock of European culture. The political situation of these countries has been precarious for centuries, ever since the Turkish conquest of the Balkans and the rise of the military empires of Russia and Prussia, but their cultural community with Western Europe survived: It was not until the Second World War that this community was...

Russia is not a country like the countries of Western Europe—a nation among the nations—it is a world apart which still remains a mystery to the average Westerner. There is no end to Russia—it is a land without frontiers, which stretches back endlessly in place and time. It is an open road into the heart of Asia. Along this road have come the great conquering peoples of the past—Huns and Avars, Khazas and Bulgars, Cumans and Mongols. They have founded their empires and passed away, but the Russian land remains.

For Russia did not come out...

There has always been a tendency to regard Europe and Asia as the opposite poles of human civilization. It is an ancient tradition which goes back as far as the origins of European historiography, for Herodotus begins his story of the wars between the Persians and the Greeks with an excursion into the mythological origins of the feud. “For my part,” he concludes, “I cannot conceive why these names, and especially women’s names [Europe, Asia and Libya] should ever have been given to a tract which is in reality one, nor why the Nile and the Phasis [or according to...

The change in the world position of Europe which has taken place during the last fifty years has inevitably caused a strong reaction against the spirit of nineteenth-century imperialism. The idea of empire has become identified with the oppression of subject peoples, the “White Man’s Burden” has become a joke, and the whole colonial development is regarded as a form of economic exploitation. Yet the imperialist phase of Western culture is not confined to the second half of the nineteenth century. It was the culmination of a much wider movement which goes back to the close of the Middle Ages...

Of all the achievements of the European expansion overseas, the creation of the United States is undoubtedly the greatest. The more the importance of Europe as the centre of world power and economic organization has declined, the more that of the United States has increased, until to-day the existence of Western Europe is becoming increasingly dependent on the economic and military power of the United States. Yet America is not only essential to the existence of Europe, it is also an essential part of Western civilization without which the survival of the latter is hardly conceivable. But though it forms...

The situation in which we find ourselves involved to-day is an extraordinarily complex one. The world is passing through a process of violent change, accelerated by war and revolution, the effects of which are felt even in the most remote and backward societies of Asia and Africa. But it is in Europe that this movement of change originated and it is from Europe that it has been propagated, so that it is only by understanding Europe that we can understand what is happening to the world.

Unfortunately the crisis has become so much a part of our daily lives and...

The change in the world position of European culture during the present century has been so great that it is difficult to find any parallel to it in the whole course of history. In comparison with this the greatest changes in the history of ancient civilization, like the decline of Hellenistic civilization in the second century B.C. or the decline of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., were comparatively gradual and were far more limited in their effects. Fifty years ago Europe enjoyed a position of world hegemony which was at once political, economic and cultural,...

The disintegration of European society by the forces of nationalism and the undermining of Western culture by the spiritual revolt of nihilism were gradual processes which continued for nearly two centuries without interfering with the material prosperity of our civilization or destroying the optimism and self-confidence of Western man. It was not until our own age that the situation was transformed by the catastrophe of the World Wars which suddenly destroyed the fools’ paradise in which the peoples of Europe had been living and brought them face to face with the forces of destruction which had been accumulating beneath the...

We have seen that the weakness of Western culture in face of the new forces that threaten its existence is due above all to its loss of faith in its own spiritual values and the growing detachment of its external way of life from its religious foundations and the sources of its spiritual vitality. If Europe is to survive—if we do not surrender to the inhuman ideal of a mass society which is a mere engine of the will to power—we must find some way to reverse this process and to recover our spiritual unity.

This is a...