When the fabric of society is so rigid that it cannot change quickly enough, adjustments are achieved by social unrest and revolutions.
From John Boyd Orr
When the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century brought a rapid increase in wealth, the demand of workers for a fair share of the wealth they were creating was conceded only after riots and strikes.
Measured in time of transport and communication, the whole round globe is now smaller than a small European country was a hundred years ago.
We are now physically, politically, and economically one world and nations so interdependent that the absolute national sovereignty of nations is no longer possible.
Empires won by conquest have always fallen either by revolt within or by defeat by a rival.
Some wars have been due to the lust of rulers for power and glory, or to revenge to wipe out the humiliation of a former defeat.
There can be no peace in the world so long as a large proportion of the population lack the necessities of life and believe that a change of the political and economic system will make them available. World peace must be based on world plenty.
In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants.
Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge.
In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, waxed powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without.
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