Alderman, "Can Democracy be Organized?" p. 158.





CHAPTER VIII

A WORLD COMMUNITY


Is there a world community? A world torn by war, as our world was
from 1914 to 1918, may not seem to give much evidence of it, and
many would at once answer "No" to our question. And yet such
phrases as the "brotherhood of man" and the "cause of humanity"
are familiar to us all. We may briefly discuss the question in
this study, because if there is such a community, we are all
members of it, and our membership in it affects our lives as
individuals and as a nation.

WHAT THE WAR DISCLOSED WITH REGARD TO A WORLD COMMUNITY

The world community is certainly very imperfectly developed, but
while the war emphasized its imperfections, it also furnished
evidence if its reality. Its existence depends upon the presence
of recognized common purposes and of organized teamwork in
accomplishing these purposes, as in the case of any community. The
war disclosed conflicting interests among the nations; but it
united for a common purpose a larger part of the world's
population than had ever before acted together in a common cause.