CHAPTER II 



THE PSYCHIC CENTRE OF THE GREAT 

 PAGAN RETROGRESSION 



WHEN in the autumn of the year 1914 the 

 nations of the world entered almost 

 without warning on the greatest war of 

 all time, in which more than half the human race 

 became engaged, and in which forces numbering 

 considerably more than thirty millions of men 

 met each other armed in the field, the world 

 stood aghast. The magnitude of the conflagration 

 seemed to emphasize in a special manner some 

 gigantic failure of the West in bringing to fruition 

 in history those high expectations of universal 

 peace and goodwill which its leading minds had for 

 centuries held up to humanity. The war was, 

 indeed, an event of far greater significance than 

 any military development that had ever happened 

 in the world. It marked the fact that the climax 

 had been reached in that extraordinary set of con- 

 ditions described in the last chapter, in which 

 under every phase of its civilization we beheld 



