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289 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1953)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0289 and id is 1 raw text is: United States Leadership in a Divided World By CHESTER E. MERROW T HIS is a crucial and decisive decade in the history of the United States, also in the history of freedom-loving nations. Our Republic occupies a des- tiny-given position of leadership in a sharply divided world. The United States, by far the strongest and the most powerful nation which has to date ex- isted upon this earth, possesses an op- portunity without parallel in the annals of mankind to exercise leadership. The free world is being attacked on many fronts and is being undermined from within wherever the Communists are able to make their sinister influence felt. In this universal struggle the forces of freedom must prevail, if ul- timately there is to be fashioned an international society in which human beings can live free from molestation and free from the threat of tyranny and enslavement. The United States is a comparatively young nation. In recalling history we recognize that this part of the world, the Western Hemisphere, has been known but for a brief period as pro- jected against the background of un- folding time. Only 461 years have elapsed since Christopher Columbus charted the way to reach the Western Hemisphere. As we peruse the ancient records of past civilizations, we find, for example, that in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Sumerians succeeded in creating one of the oldest civilizations, 4,000 years before Christ. In the Indus Basin there are remains of a civilization either con- temporary with or antecedent to the Sumerians. Compared to the long rec- ord of human activity, we have been on the stage of world affairs but a short time. It was in 1787 that the first architects of this Republic forged the Constitution of the United States in Philadelphia- 166 years ago this summer. New Hamp- shire was the ninth state to ratify the Federal Constitution in 1788, and from that time the United States has risen steadily to the prominent position in human affairs it now occupies. The adoption of the fundamental charter of the United States launched the greatest, the most ambitious, and by far the most successful experiment in free representa- tive government the world has ever known. The federal Constitution has been characterized by William E. Glad- stone, one of Britain's most eminent Prime Ministers, as the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. HISTORICAL TURNING POINTS We have reason to marvel at the ascendency of our country during the past 165 years; but there is still more reason to be impressed by the phe- nomenal and meteoric rise of the Re- public during the first half of the present century. The Spanish-American War marks a definite turning point in our history. At the time of that conflict, the United States began its role as a world power. Successful in two world wars, with nearly $50 billion invested in foreign affairs since the termination of the Second World War and with in- terests in every section of the world, we have come now to a place of strength, influence, and responsibility that will t

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