In the past decade Africa has exploded. Where the next explosion will occur no one knows. It might be riots in Nyasaland or Dahomey, demonstrations in Brazzaville or Khartoum, assassination in Constantine. The dead African past of tribal discipline and subsistence-ignorance has been challenged by a civilization immeasurably more productive in satisfying the material and esthetic wants of its populace. The answer to the challenge is diffuse and uncontrolled. Like the expanding galaxies, the ideas that result from the bomb that the West has triggered in Africa are moving with tremendous speed in every direction.

Ten years ago, it appeared that Africa, except perhaps for its northern Arab tier, was still deeply immersed in its ancient ways, that it would be many years before the African peoples reacted to Western nationalism with their own nationalism.

As one of a non-religious (some of my friends might consider it an anti-religious) bent, it has always seemed to me impossibly difficult to deal with questions of war and statecraft as moral problems. If we are thinking of “war” in the abstract, we are thinking of one of the ugly facts of life—an institution which has characterized human society from time immemorial, and which, like many other ugly facts of life, is in itself morally neutral. Like pain, pestilence or natural disaster, it presents a problem to the moralist; but the moralist can say nothing to those involved in war's agonies and cruel decisions.