________________
I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUCCESS
The World at War
(VTHEN, in August 1939, I read of the German-Russian non
W aggression pact, which just preceded the opening of the present war," I was as much surprised as many who were supposed to understand more than Indologists about political affairs and who might have known better. Yet as soon as I learned of this startling alliance between two powers that had been thought to be natural enemies, professing conflicting interests and ideals of life, I was reininded of a Hindu tale, a beast fable figuring in the epic Mahābhārata-that unique and inexhaustible treasury of spiritual and sccular wisdom. It was the parable of a cat and a mouse. And its teaching was that two sworn and deadly enemies, such as Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, might very well enter into an alliance and present a united front, if such an arrangement suited the temporary interests of both,
Once upon a time-so runs this timely tale 2-there lived a wildcat and a mouse; and they inhabited the same tree in the
1 Editor's note: The lectures of this chapter were delivered in the spring of 1942.
2 Mahabharata 12. 188.
