Each civilization has had its own habitat, its own life pattern. Each
has had its own languages, laws, traditions and customs. But despite
such local differences, all of the civilizations have had in common
those characteristics which justify their inclusion in the family of
civilizations.
Anyone who wishes to test the accuracy of these generalizations may be
satisfied by reading and observing the events that began with the wars
between Japan, China and Russia, the Spanish American War, the Boer War,
and the revolts in Cuba, China and the Philippines, all of which took
place between 1895 and 1905. The present century opened in a period of
critical struggle between empires, within empires and between imperial
centers and colonial dependencies. These preliminary skirmishes led up
to two general wars in 1914-1918 and 1936-1945, accompanied and followed
by a score of minor wars and a planet-wide rash of civil wars and wars
of independence waged by peoples of the erstwhile colonies.
Three johnnie-come-lately empires played star-roles in the drama:
Germany, the United States and Japan. The histories of all three
countries from 1870 to 1950 provide ample support for the contention
that the central theme of western civilization, as of its predecessors,
is a competitive struggle for wealth and power, aimed at expansion and
exploitation, using war and the threat of war as instruments of policy.
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