ABSTRACT
Not even the years before the War of 1914 have imposed so tense a strain upon men's minds as the period since the advent of Hitler to power. The conventions upon which our civilization had been built were challenged at their foundation. Political democracy was successful in the 19th century because it coincided with an age of immense economic expansion. Roughly its effect was to bring the middle class to power; and the reign of the middle class was accepted because the wealth that its rule made accessible permitted a wide extension of material benefits to the masses. The flaw in the 19th-century system, Professor Albert Murray has said, was the principle of national sovereignty. There is a sense in which that is a vital truth. For the state is by nature incapable of neutrality unless the interest of its members in the result of its processes is equal.
