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What is the strongest political trend in the world today?

After the last war, it was towards democracy. But somehow democracy failed the average man. When the depression came and he found himself unable to provide food and shelter for his loved ones, he demanded something more than equality of opportunity. He demanded SECURITY from want.

To answer that demand came “Strong Men,” so-called, Mussolinis and Hitlers and Antonescus and Francos and the like, and Fascism was born. Men achieved security, of a kind, but they bartered their freedom for it. And soon they learned that power feeds on power, and the only end of dictatorship is war, which destroys all.

So today the trend is to the other extreme—to Communism. All over the world you see signs of it. China has largely embraced it. All of eastern Europe is engulfed by it. France and Belgium are trending in that direction. Even here in the U. S., some labor unions are strongly Communistic, several political groups are dominated by it, it has its disciples in high places and for a time Democrats feared that their party would be taken over by the Communists.

And the reason ? The same reason that has impelled man since time began—the longing for security, security for the home, security against want, security for old age.

Since time began, the search for security has been one of the strongest urges in all of nature. You see it in the animal in the way it conceals its nest and tries to make it safe from predatory creatures—man or animal. You see it in the records of early man in the caves he dug into the sides of the mountains, in the tree huts, in the cliff dwellings. You follow it down through the ages to the walled cities, the turreted castles, the inaccessible mountains in which men made their homes.

Throughout history, you see this search for security as one of the dominant characteristics of all human kind. And now that the common man has realized his power, you find him all over the world banding together to take over all property, to the end that he and his may find that security from want that he has so long worked for.

What he does not seem to realize is that the mere redistribution of property never has and never will solve his problem. It will provide him with temporary supply, yes—but supply is a continuing problem, and when his small share of the general distribution is gone, he will be worse off than he was before, because production will have either ceased or been greatly curtailed.

Redistribution is not the answer. It has been tried repeatedly, and always failed. You must go farther back than that. You must start with the source of things. And that is what we shall try to do in the following pages.

“Know this, ye restless denizens of earth,

Know this, ye seekers after joy and mirth,

Three things there are, eternal in their worth—

LOVE, that outreaches to the humblest things:

WORK, that is glad in what it does and brings;

And FAITH, that soars upon unwearied wings.

Divine the powers that on this trio wait,

Supreme their conquest, over time and fate.

LOVE, WORK and FAITH, these three alone are great.”