FROM OUT OF THE second world war, in which the crisis of the
world had staggered into blood and destruction for a second time,
the great democratic countries and Soviet Russia emerged as
victors. Only the future will be able to answer the anxious question
as to whether the era of world wars has been brought to an ir-
revocable close by this biggest and bloodiest of all wars, or whether
mankind's powers of invention will prove their ability to destroy
culture and human lives in the devastation of a new war. Who
would not hope that the world may never again need to wade
through ruins and oceans of blood in order to re-erect its society,
its economy and its humanity?

Europe, where the artistic accomplishments analyzed in the fore-
going chapters were achieved, is for the greatest part a heap of
debris, a place of want, misery and worry. In the east the Soviet
Union has enlarged its territory and increased its power; its huge
body extends from islands in the Pacific to East Prussia and to the
Carpathian Mountains. Its political influence in the south and
southeast of the vast state extends beyond the borders to the
Balkan states and to the Adriatic and Aegean seas; and Slavic
nationalism in these regions is united with the economic ideas of
the Russian state.

The old separation of Europe into a western Europe that is
governed by Roman culture, and an eastern Europe that is dom-
inated by Constantinople and Greek-Oriental culture, is revised
in modern forms and, as in olden times, the borderline runs across
Vienna and through Austria over to the Balkans where Croats sing

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