Europe’ s world status had drastically changed. Its【A1】_____nations, once great powers, were dwindled—politically and militarily by the United States and the Soviet Union, 【A2】_____by them and by India and China, economically by the United States, Japan, and【A3】_____new economic powers that might【A4】_____. Europe’ s empires had been widely separate; and yet, like the rest of the world’ s rich Northern Hemisphere, it could not 【A5】_____the poor and hungry millions in the South. All the more reason,【A6】_____, for European countries to come together—not merely to hold their own political and economic superpowers but also to 【A7】_____their power to meet their wider responsibilities in the world.

20th century Europe had witnessed and【A8】_____extraordinarily rapid technological changes. Computers, industrial robots, and genetic engineering are only its most 【A9】_____recent examples. The splitting of the atom had 【A10】_____magnified humanity’ s power to destroy itself. Jet aircraft, space travel, and electronic telecommunications had revolutionized the sense of 【A11】_____and scale. Radio and television, still【A12】_____the cinema, had become truly “mass media” , with satellites giving all broadcasts global【A13】_____.

【A14】_____economic progress had not kept pace with technology; in a world of potential 【A15】_____and well-being, there were still both poverty and pollution. Political progress had been 【A16】_____still. International cooperation was increasing, but the basic political unit remained the nation-state. That【A17】_____from an age when the fastest means of travel have been a galloping horse. This was【A18】_____the founders of the EC, as Monnet said, were not concerned to make coalition of states【A19】_____to unite people. A united Europe along these lines, with【A20】_____rules and democratic institutions, was in his eyes a pilot plant for a united world.