From 1948 to 1953, the author, psychiatrist Brock Chisholm, served as the first Executive Director of the World Health Organization. Published five years later, his book reflects the privileged insights of his sometimes frustrating position at the helm of an international organization supposedly dedicated to world health. It also reveals the convictions that he brought to his task: religious, racial, and cultural tolerance, access to contraception, and recognition of the social determinants of health.

Admitting that his thought exercise would be limited by his own prejudices, he strove for open, direct communication as he described each country, finding something nice to say about almost all (except South Africa). The result is an intimate glimpse of "good intentions" at the dawn of the nuclear age. The view that the causes of war were to be found in the nature and behavior of man in society did not originate with Chisholm; it pervaded his era, only to be rejected as naive by contemporary "realist" scholars of international relations who located the problem in states. [See Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959)].

Read a half century later and in the wake of the Balkans war, these national essays generate an eerie blend of ironic "déjà vu" and haunting prophecy. Chisholm's optimism notwithstanding--the answer to his title's question, sadly, seems to be "no."