This nation is in the midst of the most important decisions any people on earth have ever faced. If we make them as members of the Earthly City alone, which as St. Augustine said is formed by love of self even to the contempt of God, we or our descendants will witness the final form of uncritical patriotism: the end of our state in the end of all civilization. But if those in authority, pressed on by us, will recognize their ultimate allegiance to the City of God which transcends all national sovereignty and boundaries there is good hope that the decision will be made for the good of all mankind and not simply for our destruction. If they or we are fearful in this fatal moment, we might remember the other side of citizenship--as members of the City of God we are also entitled to its protection and its power. Remember the experience of Elisha and his servant. And Elisha prayed and said, "Lord, I pray thee open his eyes that he may see. And then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw, And behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." "_Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before._" One might well assume that these words of St. Paul are an accepted part of all theories of progress; looking forward instead of backward. But Lewis Mumford in his book _The Condition of Man_ points out that this has unfortunately not always been the case, to the confusion and sidetracking of mankind's efforts. Progress, he says, may be considered in either of two ways--getting closer to a goal, or getting farther away from a starting point. And it was in the latter sense that the exponents of progress in the era of Romanticism; Hume, Voltaire, and the others, preached it--the casting loose from a past crippled by evils: brutality, superstition, ignorance, misery. But have these curses disappeared from the earth? Have they not in many respects grown worse? I am afraid so, and I think it is due in large part to this negative theory of progress which has possessed man since the Renaissance. The intended cures of evils have been too often sought purely as an escape from the evil itself and not with a view to ultimate good. Serfdom and slavery were evil, so men broke away and became free; but free for what? That was of little consequence as long as they were free. The Germans felt the pressure of other nations around them so they needs must make more Lebensraum--room in which to be free. And what nation has ever become so enslaved in the process? We didn't want war, and so with the mounting fear of war before our eyes, we temporized until the greatest war in history came upon us. An individual realizes how great is his own selfishness and so to overcome it, he concentrates upon self-centered cure and becomes even more entangled.