FEW EVENTS in recent history have generated as much confidence in the future and such high hopes for a better world as the fall of the Berlin wall some five years ago, symbolizing as it did the end of the cold war. The spectre of global nuclear cataclysm, which has haunted humanity since the dawn of the nuclear age has receded, and in its place has emerged the promise of an era of international peace freeing the energies of nations to work together towards economic and social progress for the whole mankind.