wider historical process which comes to an acute head in the out-
break of large-scale fighting.

The Russian Revolution, the civil wars in Germany in the years
1918-24, the uprisings in India, the Allied intervention in revolution-
ary Russia, the Balkan revolts, the Turco-Greek war, the strike
waves in nearly every country, were all part of what may properly
be called the First World War. Not until their conclusion was the
war itself brought to an end. World political conditions quieted--
relatively--down. The interim period of recuperation set in, and
lasted until the preparatory stage of the new war began. We now
realize that the first battles of the Second World War were fought
in Spain, and in China from 1937 on. The new war reached its overt
military climax from 1940 to 1945 (the battles of 1939 were still pre-
liminary), and is now fading out, with the expected aftermath. The
strike waves in the United States, the end of the Third Republic in
France, the ousting of the Italian monarchy, the Labour Party victory
in England, the colonial disturbances in the Far East, all these may
be included as part of the Second World War.

But the events that I have begun by citing--the Greek mutiny
and civil war, the Chinese civil war, the Iranian conflict--are of a
different character. They are not part of the Second World War,
nor of its accompaniment nor aftermath. The forces basically op-
posed in them--opposed and clashing by arms, as well as by eco-
nomic and diplomatic competition--are not aligned as were the
opposing forces of the Second World War. One of the main power
groupings of the war has, indeed, been eliminated altogether. More-
over, the new conflict pushes through those other disturbances which
might, from one point of view, be judged as part of the war's after-
math.

The comforting opinion that the world troubles since August,
1945, are in a way normal, the natural features of a time of settling-
down and readjustment, like the headache and queasiness following
a heavy drunk, is a delusion. These troubles are not a hangover, but
the first sips in a new bout. The armed skirmishes of a new war
have started before the old war is finished. A general peace agree-
ment is impossible not because leftovers from the old war are still
unswept, but because the debris of a new war is already piling up.

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