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THE INTERPLAY OF EAST AND WEST by Barbara Ward

THE INTERPLAY OF EAST AND WEST

By

Pub Date: June 14th, 1957
ISBN: 0393001628
Publisher: Norton

Always challenging, always interesting, Barbara Ward brings her views of the points of conflict and cooperation between East and West into sharp focus in three lectures which read consecutively as a closely reasoned and integrated study. Against a succinct-necessarily oversimplified- summary of the changing pattern of contact between East and West dating back to their beginnings in nascent civilizations, she comes to the period when Asia was more or less static while Europe experience rapid changes, -- in religion, in politics, in economics. The succeeding years, following the 15th century, were years of non-contact, until the 16th century dynamism reached out into the Orient. Economic transformation of Europe brought political consequences; the credit side of the creative energy had its dark shadows of complacency in excesses of modernism, in creation of a void in religious thinking, in the violent destruction by the West of the East's traditional ways without substituting positive values in their place. The ""battering ram of the West...destroyed the old order"". Now today, while direct Western control is all but gone, it is impossible for the West to avoid the Asian crisis. We must take responsibility for a constructive approach or accept the tragedy of Communism stepping into the void. Economic modernization is their crying need, in different areas and different ways. China will tend to follow the Russian plan; India is attempting a way of freedom and mixed economy. The decision rests on the success of the Indian plan, which means expansion from the bottom, the antithesis of collectivization. We are involved in the challenge of the uncommitted areas, whether from enlightened self interest or moral responsibility. And the cost? Perhaps 1% of the United States national income over fifty years would give the answer we must have for survival. A minimum plan for international order must be achieved to prevent atomic war, to preserve the variety and diversity of national interests, to provide for a policy of international living. Can we gain the vision?