LESS than two centuries ago the steam engine harnessed coal to the looms of England. With coal came iron and steel, and with steel and steam came the industrial revolution, its factories massed in cities, its railroads weaving manufacturing centres together, its steel ships and cables and telegraph wires unfolding and integrating the economic life of the world. In western Europe especially it converted an age-long economic deficit into an economic surplus. For the first time in human history it brought the possibility of the good life to every man’s door.

But it found men spiritually unprepared. As in the tribal days men warred upon one another for food, so now they warred upon one another for coal and the incredible spawn of coal.* Instead of establishing civilisation on foundations of mutual aid, service, and brotherhood, men turned their cities into shambles of childhood,* poverty was embittered, civil strife in mine, mill, and factory became endemic, wars on an unprecedented scale engaged nations and groups of nations. The World War* and the famine and widespread desolation that followed gave tragic evidence of our spiritual unpreparedness.