ABSTRACT
The twentieth century requires different treatment from the past systems we have been examining. This is our century. Much of it is familiar to us through direct experience and living memory, and the sequence of events is too well known to need recapitulation. But it is too recent, and its outcome and consequences too unpredictable, for us yet to be able to look at it in adequate perspective. We cannot see the wood for the trees. We are intellectually and emotionally children of our era, with commitments and loyalties which come from our involvement in the struggles of the time. Since we cannot view our own century with the same detachment as the Mauryan Empire or the European wars of religion, we need to make a special mental effort to apply to it the same analysis as we have to the past: retaining our convictions but recognizing that others, and especially future generations, will question them and be puzzled by the importance which we attach to them.
