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The disquieting influence of over thirty million souls living under minority conditions throughout the continent of Europe; the vast and ever-swelling army of the unemployed with its crushing burden and demoralizing influence on governments and peoples; the wicked, unbridled race of armaments swallowing an ever-increasing share of the substance of already impoverished nations; the utter demoralization from which the international financial markets are now increasingly suffering; the onslaught of secularism invading what has hitherto been regarded as the impregnable strongholds of Christian and Muslim orthodoxy - these stand out as the gravest symptoms that bode ill for the future stability of the structure of modern civilization. Little wonder if one of Europe's preeminent thinkers, honored for his wisdom and restraint, should have been forced to make so bold an assertion: "The world is passing through the gravest crisis in the history of civilization." "We stand," writes another, "before either a world catastrophe, or perhaps before the dawn of a greater era of truth and wisdom." "It is in such times," he adds, "that religions have perished and are born."
(32:2)
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