Races and nations as functions of the world whole

Soviet Russia itself, he said, is in danger from Japan, so does it not need friendship with New Europe?

‘Is a confederated Europe not an imperative need of human organisation? And is not the International of Israel . a spiritual international able to initiate a reconciliation of the West with the East? And is not the British Commonwealth itself a World-International able and called to give a lead for organisation of suffering humanity? . . . The Atlantic Alliance from and around a Unified Europe is necessary

and possible.’

Obviously it is out of the question to give more than a limited impression of the unique quality of these articles—all the more remarkable since they were published in an inexpensive weekly paper—but we must hope that the main lines of thought may emerge even if the impact of the intense concentration in the writing cannot be transmitted. Though we are led in the course of these writings to an intensified awareness of the world’s need for individuated persons, Mitrinovié does warn us that individuation by itself is not the whole of human or spiritual attainment. At the same time he warns us also against the idolatry of worshipping false gods, such as nations, Churches, Kremlin International or any other merely instrumental parts or functions of

the Whole.

‘The true Wholeness is personality only,’ he said: “individuals matter,’

Throughout his work Mitrinovié took account of a distinction between Evolution and History, and expressed the view that ‘all history is only instrumental’. It is in the light of this that he has written repeatedly that while this or that race or nation may fail to fulfil its human task (with consequent great human suffering and travail) Adam, mankind altogether, cannot ultimately fail. But meanwhile

‘this, our world-crisis, is one of the total and radical crises of the procession of evolution and history . . . Evolution is not history. History proper and history essential is of the West... But our crisis today is not only an historic world-