I shall endeavor to speak with a reasonable brevity and clarity, and I do so with complete freedom from what you call bias. I speak in terms of humanity - without distinction of race, color or nation; I have no particular political views, because I know that all potential theories, ideologies and governments are temporary states and conditions, controlling different groups of human beings on their way from the human state to the divine. This is a point of view oft overlooked by many of you who - temporarily and oft fanatically - belong to one or other of these ephemeral states of mind and passing human attitudes. I have no particular religious preferences, knowing as I do that all roads lead to God and that the sense of divinity is so dominant and inherent in the human heart that naught at any time can crush it out; life, experience, trial, pain and instinctive human orientation lead all men finally back into the light of God. I can and do, therefore, love all men, irrespective of nationality and present ideas, as do all with whom I am associated. Looking upon the moving screen of time with a vision which reaches into the future and is inclusive of the past (for this is the prerogative of all trained world disciples) I know that present events will play their timely part, will give place to others in due time, and that - when the immediate processes of readjustment in human values, spiritual objectives and political schemes, religious orientations and territorial syntheses are completed - the world will settle down again to the processes of daily living. The immediate opportunity and situation in which we find ourselves [213] will have proved dynamically useful or (such is the sad possibility) negatively futile. A fresh cycle of civilization, culture and growth will have been inaugurated which will be colored by the ancient hues of selfish desire and aggressive acquisitiveness, or by the newer and more beautiful coloring of happy and satisfactory international relationships, of religious understanding and of the much needed and demanded economic cooperation.

For decades, we, the teachers of the race of men, have watched certain great world (or planetary) tendencies take shape, assume defined and pronounced outlines and become conditioning potencies. This shaping and definition was essential if the issue was to be presented with clarity to humanity, thus enabling a basic choice to be presented to the sons of men and the placing in their hands of certain determinations which could, if rightly directed, carve out for them a new and better future. Such a presentation has never before been possible, because never before has mankind been at the stage where it could grasp the situation intelligently, or been so closely and rapidly interrelated by the radio, telephone, the press and the telegraph. The needed choices can now be made in cooperation, in consultation and with open eyes. The choice is clearly before the thinking people [214] in every country, and upon their decision rests the fate of the less intelligent masses. Hence the present responsibility of the national leaders, of the representatives of the people in the governments, of the churches, and of the intelligentsia in all lands, without exception. There should be no shirking or evasion of responsibility. There is, however, much.