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Show A New Era Dawns By Dr. : toman Vincent Peale Editor's note The reverend Norman Vincent Peale, D. D. is pastor of Marble Coligiate Church, Fifth Avenue, New York City. A new era has dawned with the ending of the Japanese war. The world will never be quite the same again. Men are thinking different thoughts and the one uppermost In their minds Is that there must never be another war. The release of atomic energy so dramatically demonstrated at Hiroshima Hiro-shima a-.'d Nagasaki has solemnized solemn-ized and sobered the thoughts of men. They realize that, of in 1945 sixty per cent of Hiroshima can be destroyed by atom bomb num-1 ber one, In 1970, twenty-five years later, the Hiroshima bomb will by comparison be a crude mechanism compared with the instrument that will have been developed 25 years hence. By that time this weapon of destruction will contain such power that a city the size of New York could be blotted out by one . atomic bomb, dropped by one lone plane. It is possible it may not even be necessary to use a plane end a bomb, but one man sitting in a scientific laboratory will be able to press a button and dls- charge a death-ray to destroy cities ten thousand miles away. A few years ago such statements as these would have been in the realm of magic; people would have smiled at them; but today every-.body every-.body knows that they are horrible, sinister, awful truths. Therefore, the old, easy, settle-down attitude with which men have closed' great wars does not and cannot prevail. Something new and dire has come to the world, and it is this which definitely marks the dawn of a ! new era. I titude that we must create a work-t"ble work-t"ble world security formula. They do not know how this is going to 'be done, but we are agreed that it must be done. The significant thing is that this agrement - is not only academic, it is desperately desperat-ely intense. It amounts to a spiritual spirit-ual urge. The world is different because it has a new and growing grow-ing spiritual objective, namely, a deeper conviction regarding human fellowship. This carried to its logical log-ical conclusion will tend to break down raci.il antagonism and super-nationalism, super-nationalism, and will move in the direction of a world community, in fact, as well as in theory. Also, we are in a new era because be-cause the average American is on " the march. He sent out his sons to save freedom. Now he means to have freedom. He demands a better day. I am not persuaded .that he wants to destroy the Am--ericun system of free enterprise. In fact, I think he is devoted to and believes in it. He wants it to work and he Is going to support sup-port that system unless and until un-til its leaders demonstrate that they are unaware of the new era. Then he may throw them over. |