ABSTRACT
Thought about public affairs in recent years has been so completely absorbed by the problem of relations between Russia and the West that various other problems, which would remain even if that one were solved, have not received as much attention as they deserve. The world during the last one hundred and fifty years has been undergoing transformation so rapid that ideas and institutions have been unable to keep pace with modern needs. And, what is proving in some ways even more serious, ideas which might be beneficent if they spread slowly have spread with the rapidity and destructiveness of a prairie fire.
