ABSTRACT
A common attitude in western countries has been to represent le tiers monde 1 as a battleground of ideas in which the western countries are engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the eastern countries for the souls of the emerging and reawakening peoples. Russia and China, it is said, are carrying the gospel of communism to politically inexperienced peoples, whose older customs, traditions, and faiths are collapsing and who are seeking new faiths and new ways of life to fill the resulting void. The West, it is often said, is absorbed in the pursuit of material gain and has no buoyant faith, no inspiring ideals, no concerted aims, comparable in appeal with the lure of communist doctrines and their application.
