WHAT OF IT? AN OPEN LETTER TO STUDENTS 521 



How inclusive must this cooperation be? In the time of the BibHcal patri- 

 archs the members of one family cooperated together, but each family was 

 more or less continually at war with other families. In later times families 

 joined together to form cities, but each city-state was more or less con- 

 stantly at war with every other one. Eventually the city-states joined to 

 form confederations and these finally became nations. Each change en- 

 larged the circle within which cooperation was operative. We have now 

 reached the stage when it seems imperative that for the good of mankind 

 nations shall join into super-states, enlarging the cooperative circle still 

 further. Just at present we seem destined to have two such cooperative 

 circles, one labeled '"the East," the other ""the West." The two circles are 

 pitted against each other, but this conflict seems unlikely to be a perma- 

 nent condition. By some means, peaceful or otherwise, the circles will 

 merse to form one — the ""One World" of Wendell Willkie. 



Man has become so powerful in controlling his own social evolution, in- 

 cluding the invention of means for his own destruction, that nothing short 

 of complete cooperation by all peoples on our "'shrinking planet" will suf- 

 fice. If any people or society finds itself unable to adapt to such coopera- 

 tive living on a global scale we may predict that that people or society will 

 go the way of the dinosaurs, leaving the earth to those peoples who can 

 make the adjustment. Natural selection is not dead; but in the modern 

 world natural selection is placing a premium on ability to live coopera- 

 tively, not competitively. 



Each of us is naturally interested that his society shall be among the sur- 

 vivors. It is not pleasant to imagine a future in which our particular race or 

 nation shall have no part. How can we help to insure that our group shall 

 not be eliminated by natural selection? Evidently, since social evolution is 

 so largely under human control, we can contribute most by supporting aU 

 measures which further cooperative living on this earth. 



Perhaps all peoples will be able to make the adjustment to cooperative 

 living on a global scale. On the other hand, being as pessimistic as possible 

 for the moment, we may ask: What will happen if no peoples can make 

 the necessary adaptation? Then we may feel sure that mankind as a whole 

 will become as extinct as the dinosaurs (probably through self-destruc- 

 tion), leaving our environmental niches free for exploitation by some other 

 form of life. What form of life? We should have as great difiiculty predict- 

 ing; that as a dinosaur would have had predicting that the mammals would 

 inherit his place on earth. 



But such pessimism is untimely. Possibly the way of progress will be 

 found to lie through some form other than man. We have reason to 



