001133 For Union Now

A Proposal for a Federal Union of the

By Clarence K. Streit FLOR IDAATLANTI C.UNIVERSITY LIBRARY SOCI AUST - lABOR COUEGTlON The greatest political and economic opportunity in history. -Fortune. The possible answer to Hider's "Mein Kampf". -St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Published by The Union Press, National Union Building, Washington, D.C. Single Copies, 25c each. In quantities, We each, postpaid. Editorials and Reviews Washington (D. C.) Post: Those who read Mr. Streit's book will be im­ pressed with the logic and persuasiveness with which he meets many of the obvious criticisms that come to mind.... Here is a proposal, breath-taking but in no sense silly, to challenge fundamental thinking in our own and other democracies.... Resident for 10 years at the seat of the , he watched the panorama there with the cool detachment of the first-class newspaperman and the objectivity of the Midwestern American who feels personally remote from Old-World frenzies. For Mr. Streit, while reared in Montana, is a native of Missouri, with all thereby implied. (Editorial.) Philadelphia Inquirer: Wars, rumors of war, threats of war; militarism, rearmament and back-breaking taxation; economic uncertainty and universal jitters - In the mind of virtually every man and woman today is the unanswered question: Can nothing be done to end these recurring terrors? ... Union Now • .. is one man's answer so daring in concept, so sweeping in its implications that it merits all the attention it will receive.... The idea of federated states is not fantastic. It is a reality spectacularly successful in our own country.... Is it too much to believe that sometime, somehow, the democratic nations of the world will unite in a federation somewhat resembling the ? (Editorial.) Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser: It is a grand idea. Mr. Streit himself recognizes the barriers that must be crossed. But.the peril of the present situa­ tion demands action... . What better solution to the indirection of the present can anyone suggest? What hope of a peaceful existence can one offer if Mr. Streit's essential idea is not finally adopted? (Editorial.) The New York Times Book Review: The vision is a great one, which at least points the way to a better world than this ghastly one we are now all living in.... Someday ... something like what Mr. Streit suggests will have to come to pass, either now or after we and our children's children have waded anew through flowing rivers of blood in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. We may say that such a solution is only a dream, but the reader of Mr. Streit's book will feel Fate marching on. -James Truslow Adams. Chicago 'Daily News: This book is the moststimulating piece of hard­ boiled political reasoning you are likely to run across in many a day.. , . It may be the inception of a movement which will make it possible for peaceful and liberty-loving people to enjoy the sort of life they want to lead without forever facing the muzzle of a loaded gun. (Review by Sterling North.) St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The possible answer of the democracies to Adolf Hitler's ," Mein Kampf." ... It is a thought-provoking document, one to be read and debated by all concerned with maintaining Western civilization. ... He has the distinction of placing before the world the first and most complete proposal for .reversing the present trend which seems to be leading to another great war. (Review by Raymond P. Brandt, ex-President, Na­ tional Press Club.) A PROPOSAL FOR A FEDERAL UNION OF THE DEMOCRACIES

FOR UNION NOW

By Clarence K. Streit

T he first chapter of the book, Unio n Now, wa s written by the au thor as a pamphlet giving the essence of the volume. It is no w published here separately as a pamphlet. To it is added a preface spec ially written for this pamphlet and dealing with the latest develop­ ments; also the foreword of the book , its "last word," and its complete table of con ten ts. A glance at these contents will show that the pamphlet serves as an appetizer rathe r than as the meal itself. The pamphlet is published by spec ial arrangement with H arper & Bros., N ew York, publishers of Union Now. European publishers are Jonathan Cape, Ltd., London, and La Librairie de Medicis, Paris.

Published by The Union Press, National Union Building, Washington, D. C. Foreword Today the problem of securing indi vidual freedom, , peace and prosperity is a problem in organ izing worl d govern ment, and to that problem this book brings a fresh solution backed by fresh analysis. Its essence may be fou nd in the first chap ter. T h is may lead some to assume that in writing this book I began with th is chap ter, too. T he op posite occurred . T he first chap­ ter was written last. T he conclusio ns it expresses are not to be taken as a thes is wh ich the book was written to prove. Instead I have drawn them fro m it and have sough t for the reader's conven ience to say at the star t as conc isely as I could the essence - not the summary - of what I have to say.

I have drawn these conclusio ns from much more than th is book, in fact from all my expe rience. T hey have grown in me since you th -" th is is what I have lea rnt from America " - and especia lly since the war, particularly durin g the period since 1920 which I have spent working as an American newspaper corresponden t in a score of countries of the Old and N ew W orlds, and more particularly since 1929. T h is last period I have spe n t reporting mainly fr om Geneva and Basle the effor ts of mankind to solve the problem of livin g together less precariously and meanly, to organize and apply world governmen t and law. I have followed these effor ts day in and out fo r more th an 3,000 days; I wo uld give in th is book not my experiences but what I have learned from them.

In re porting what I have found I have followed bro adly the America n rules of my p rofession which require the reporter to pi ck ou t, boil down and tell a t the start in the order of importance the essen tia ls he has to tell. My method may be criticized as journalistic, but the quantity of speeches and documents and vo lumes I have had to wade throug h in my dai ly newspaper work in order to find the essentia ls thei r authors had to say has convinced me tha t th e id eal for the presentation of all serio us thought is th e id eal that Ameri can news reporters seek, far from it though we fail. In a worl d so full and wi th a life so short as ours it seems to me to be hi ghly in the in terest of everyone - layman or ex pert - to get and give hi s essen tials in eve ry field as quickl y as the dangers of over-sim plifying permit. Since everyone re ads much more th an he writes and has far more to learn than teach, it see ms to me that this journalistic method is to the general advantage - though it does make the writer's work much harder. Certainly I have encou n tered the difficulty that Pa scal expressed long ago : "The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first."

2 Preface T his pamphlet comes to answer a wide dem and for some thing giVmg briefly the essence of the proposal made in th e book, Union Now. It is not meant to re place the book bu t to help spread more quickl y its basic ideas. Certainly there is eve n greater need for speed now th an wh en th is book was first printed during the September crisis. In th e few mo nths since th en di sasters have already swept aside th e. Munich meth od and moved on toward ca tastrophe on ly m or e rapidly th an was foreseen in the pages before you. Since th en have come th e October pogr om, the sudden ri se of th e Tunisian war th rea t, th e weakness of th e Bri tish pound, a flight of gold to us 27 times faster tha n a year ago, a fall in Ame rican cotton ex po r ts below even depression levels, deepening recession, more frenzied arms racing on all sides , the victory of the Fascist and Nazi cause in Spa in, the reduction of th e Czechoslovak democracy to the sta tus of a European colony of Germany in brazen violation of th e Munich accord and th e most solemn pl edges of Adolf Hitler. And who now says this is th e end? Events have serve d to bring out on ly more sharply th at our on ly choice is between organizing th e world peacefully by mutual agreement or being ruth­ lessly organized under the military force of di ctatorship. In Sep tember Hitler was preaching pure nationalism and it was still po ssible to dream that he would limit hi mself in practice to uniting under him all th e Germans and would leave the other na tional states independent. That dream van ishe d the day he annexed to German y the Czechs whom he had said in Septem ber he d id not wan t. T he Rubicon is crosse d. Each week th e dem ocracies will face more sharply now the choice between unit in g th emselves freely or being united by and under an autocra t. T he eco nomic in secu rity and chaos, and the d isunion and in effecti ve gove rnme nt underlying them in Germany in 1932 brough t Hitler to power in Germ any the n. They ex ist today in th e world­ indeed , th ere was at least an in ter-sta te governme n t among th e sta tes of th e Fed eral R epublic of Germ any in 1932 and there is none at all among th e democracies of the Atlantic today. The conditions that brought on Hitler in Germany are bringing him on in th e world, and they are bound to continue bringing on world govern me n t under di ctatorship if th ey are not ended by world union of th e democracies. There is still time, but only time, for th e democracies to end these con­ ditions and prevent the catastro phe by organizing themselves in the federal Union that Un ion Now proposes. Union now is not less but more than ever th e only possible way through. Hitler has made clear that half-measures and the ir .half-hearted fathers will not sto p him. 3 An alliance of the democracies - to say nothing of looser forms of co­ operation - is not nearly so strong militarily as a federal union of them, and it is bound to build up alliance and the will to war among the people on the other side. But the Union proposed here does not aim, as alliances do, to maintain the freedom and power of nations as the highest good. Union can be made only by people reducing the freedom and power of their national governments in order to increase their own individual freedom and power. Union offers from the outset to admit outside peoples to it on the same equal terms as the American or Swiss Unions admit the people of a state or canton-once they too reduce the freedom and power of their national governments in order to increase their own individual power and freedom and establish for themselves the Rights of Man for which the Union itself would be made. Here is the tremendous advantage of the Union over all other methods of organizing the democracies. It alone provides them with a powerful lever for overthrowing dictatorship from within, without war. Consider the contrast that will be supplied once a few democracies form a federal urnon, a contrast so strong that no censorship can long obscure it: On the one side, an overwhelmingly powerful and invulnerable Union growing rapidly more powerful militarily, economically, morally, by its policy of admitting to it other peoples as equal citizens by free mutual consent. On the other side, a dictator uniting nations under him by force, one nation, itself enslaved, enslaving others as inferiors. What the dictator gains in land and material strength is trifling beside the strength the democracies gain by uniting, and what he gains is offset by the indigestible character of the foreign bodies that he swallows. With every non-German people that Hitler subjugates he needs to divert more German soldiers to policing and holding down this hostile population. The more the Union grows, the more restive not only his non-German but his G c ~man subjects must become - for all these individuals value th eir lives and liberty, too, and they will see that every people that the Union admits to membership in it makes attack against it more hopeless, and at the same time proves that this Union is no false promise and that they, too, have everything to gain by overthrowing their dictator and joining us. In Union, and in Union alone, remains the hope of preventing the catas­ trophe. But for the Germans and the Italians and the others to be able to choose between Union and Empire, between Democracy and Dictatorship, between Freedom and . Frenzy, our democracies must first choose to form the Union. C. K. S. Washington, D . C. March 21, 1939. For Union Now

Now it is pro pose d to for m a Government for men and not fo r Societies of men or Stat es. - George Mason in the Am erican Union's Constitutional Convention. I am con vinced that this is th e safest course for your lib erty) your dignity and your happiness... I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions) and I will freely lay before yo u th e reasons on which th ey are founded. .. M y argu­ ments will be op en to all ) and ma y be judged of by all. They shall at least be offered in a spiri t which will not disgrace the cause of truth. - Alexander Hamilton, opening The Federalist. Now when man's future seems so vast catastrophe threatens to cut us from it. The dangers with which depression, dictatorship, false recovery and war are hemming us in have become so grave and imminent that we no longer need concern ourselves with proving how grave and near they are, certainly" not since the September that reeled from Nuremberg through Berchtesgaden and Godesburg to end at Munich. vVe need concern ourselves instead with th e problem of escaping them and the cruel dilemma Munich found and left democracy facing: Whether to ri sk peace or freedom? That is the problem with which this book is concerned. I believe there is a way through these dangers, and out of th e dilemma, a way to do what we all want, to keep both peace and fre edom, an d keep th em securely and be done with this ni ghtmare. It prom ises I?-0t only escape but life such as I, too , never hoped could be lived in my time. It is not an easy way - wh o expects one? - and to many it will seem at first too hard to be practi cal. But this is because its difficulties are greatest at the start; other ways that seem easier and more obvious to begin with grow in creasin gly hard and lead to frustration. How could we feel hemmed in if th e way through were so easy to tak e or even see at first? For my pa rt to find it I had to stu mble on it, but once found it soon ope ned so widely as to make me wonder how I had ever fail ed so long to see it. I shall not be surprised then if you begin by being skeptical or di scou ra ged by th e difficulties at th e start, but I ask you to remember that th e essential question is: Which way will really lead us through , not, which way star ts most like a valley, least like a crack in the wall? Since 1933 when I stum bled on this way I have been exploring it all I could and trying, in the writing of this book, to clear away the things hiding it. By all the tests of common sense and experience I find it to be our safest, surest way; it proves in fact to be noth ing new but a forgotten way whi ch our fathers 5 opened up and tried out successfully long ago when they were hemmed III as we are now. I believe it will lead us through in time to avoid catastrophe if only we make the most of the brief respite gained at Munich to agree to set out on it without delay. The way through. is Union now of th'e democracies that th e North Atlantic and a thousand other things already unite - Union of th ese few peaples in a great federal republic built on and for the thing they sha re most) their common democratic principle of government for the sak e of individual freedom. This Union would be designed (a) to provide effective common govern­ ment in our democratic world in those fields where such common government will clearly serve man's freedom better than separate governments, (b) to maintain independent national governments in all other fields where such .government will best serve man's freedom, and (c) to create by its constitution a nucleus capable of growing into universal world govern­ ment peacefully and as rapidly as such growth will best serve man's freedom. By (a) I mean the Union of the North Atlantic democracies in these five fields: a union citizenship a union defense force a union customs-free economy a union money a union postal and communications system. By (b) I mean the Union government shall guarantee against all enemies, foreign and domestic, not only those rights of man that are common to all democracies' but every existing national or local right that is not clearly incompatible with effective union government in the five named fields. The Union would guarantee the right of each democracy in it to govern inde­ pendently all its home affairs and practice democracy at home in its own tongue, according to its own customs and in its own way, whether by republic or kingdom, presidential, cabinet or other form of government, capitalist, socialist or other economic system. By (c) I mean the founder democracies shall so constitute the Union as to encourage the nations outside it and the colonies inside it to seek to unite with it instead of against it. Admission to the Union and to all its tremendous advantages for the individual man and woman would from the outset be open equally to every democracy, now or to come, that guarantees its citizens the Union's minimum Bill of Rights. The Great Republic would be organized with a view to its spreading peacefully round the earth as nations grow ripe for it. Its Constitution would aim clearly at achieving eventually by this peaceful, ripening, natural method the goal millions have dreamed of individually but never sought to get by deliberately planning and patiently working together to achieve it. That goal 6 would be achieved by Union when every individual of our species would be a citizen of it , a citizen of a disarmed world enjoying "world free trade, a world money and a world communications system. Then Man's vast future would begin. T h is goal will seem so remote now as to d iscourage all but th e str ong from sett ing out for it or even acknowledging that th ey stand for it. It is not now so remote, it does not now need men so strong as it did wh en Lincoln preserved the American Union «for the great republic, for th e principle it lives by and keeps alive, for man's vast future. » It will no longer be visionary once th e Atlantic democracies unite. Their Union is not so remote, and their Union is all that concerns us here and now.

THE AMERICAN WAY THROUGH These proceedings may at first appem' strange and difficult; but, lik e other steps which we have already passed over, will in a little time becom e familiar and agreeable. - Thomas Paine in Common Sense. One hundred and fifty years ago a few American democracies opened this union way through. The dangers of depression, di ctatorship and war, and the persuasiveness of clear thinking and courageous leadership led them then to abandon the heresy into which they had fallen. That heresy converted the sovereignty of the state from means to individual freedom into the supreme end itself and produced the wretched «League of Friendship» of the Articles of Confederation. Abandoning all this the democrats of America turned back to their Declaration of Independence - of the independence of Man from the State and of the dependence of free men on each other for th eir freedom, the Declaration: That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by th eir creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are lif e, lib erty and th e pursuit of happiness, that to secure th ese rights governme nts are instituted am ong men, deriving their just powers from th e consent of th e governe d, that wh en ever any form of government becom es destructive of th ese ends it is the right of th e people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new govern me nt, laying its foundations on such principles and organ izing its pow ers in such form as to th em shall seem most lik ely to effect their safety and happiness. Finding they had wrongly applied this philosophy to establish Thirteen «free and independent States» and organize them as the League of Fri endship so that «each State retains its sovereign ty, fre edom and indep enden ce,» they applied it next as «W e the people of the United States» to «secure th e ble ssings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.» To do this th ey in vented and set up a new kind of interstate government. It has worked ever since as the other, leagu e type has never worked. It has proved to be an «astonishing and unexampled succe ss,» as Lord Acton said, not only in America but wherever 7 democracies have tried it regardless of conditions, - among the Germans. French and Italians of S~itzerland, the English and French of , the Dutch and English of the Union of . It is the kind of inter-state government that Lincoln, to distinguish it from the opposing type of govern­ ment of, by and for states,called «government of the people, by the people, for the people.» It is the way that I call Union. To follow this way through now our Atlantic democracies - and first of all the American Union - have only to abandon in their turn the same heresy into which they have fallen, the heresy of absolute national sovereignty and its vain alternatives, neutrality, balance of power alliance or League of Nations. We the people of the Atlantic have only to cease sacrificing need­ lessly our individual freedom to the freedom of our nations, be true to our democratic philosophy and establish that «more perfect Union» toward which all our existing unions explicitly or implicitly aim. Can we hope to find a safer, surer, more successful way than this? What democrat among us does not hope that this Union will be made some day? What practical man believes it will ever be made by mere dreaming or that the longer we delay starting to make it the sooner we shall have it? All It will take to make this Union - whether in a thousand years or now, whether long after catastrophe or just in time to prevent it, - is agreement by a majority to do it. Union is one of those things which to do we need but agree to do, and which we can not possibly ever do except by agreeing to do it. Why 'then can we not do it now in time for us to benefit by it and save millions of lives? Are we so much feebler than our fathers and our children that we can not do what our fathers did and what we expect our children to do? Why can not we agree on Union now? Are not liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable as in Webster's day? We can not be for liberty and against Union. We can not be both for and agamst liberty and Union now. We must choose. DEFINITIONS Democracy I would define more closely than the dictionary that defines it as «government by the people,» (though I would not attempt needless preci­ sion and would indicate an ideal rather than an average.) I would add with Lincoln, and I would stress, that democracy is also government for the people and of the people - the people being composed of individuals all given equal weight in principle. Democracy to me is the way to individual freedom formed by men organ­ izing themselves on the principle of the equality of man. That is, they organize government of themselves in the sense that their laws operate on them individually as equals. They organize government by themselves, each having an equal vote in making law. They organize government for them- 8 selves, to secure eq ua lly the freedom, in the broadest sense of the term, of each of them. By democracy I mean gove rnme n t of the totality by the majority for the sake eq ually of each minority of one, particularly as regards securing him such rights as freedom of speech , press and association. (If merely these three ri ghts are really secu red to all individuals they have the key, I believe, to all the other ri ghts in all the other fields, political, juridicial, economic, etc. , that form part of individual freedom.) Union to me is a democracy composed of democracies - an inter-state go vernment organ ized on the same basic principle, by the same basic method and for the same basic purpose as the democracies in it, and wi th the powers of governmen t di vid ed between the union and the sta tes the better to advance this common purpose, individual freedom . Union and league I use as opposit e terms. I di vide all organization of inter-state re latio ns in to two types, accord ing to whethe r man or the state is the unit and the eq uality of man or the eq uality of the state is «the principle it lives by and keeps alive.» I restrict the term union to the former, and the term leagu e to the latter. T o make clearer this di stinction and what I mean by unit, th ese three points may help: First, a leagu e is a govern men t of govern men ts: It governs each people in its territory as a unit through that unit's governme n t. Its laws can be broken on ly by a people acting through it s go vernment, and enforced only by the league coe rci ng that people as a unit, regardless of whether ind ivid uals in it opposed or favored the violatio n . A union is a govern me n t of the people: It gove rns each individual in its territory directly as a unit. Its law s apply eq ually to each individual instead of to each govern me n t or people, can be broken only by individual s and can be enforced only by coe rcing and punish­ ing individuals found guilty of having not. sim ply favored but ca used the viola tion . Second, a league is a government by gover nmen ts: Its laws are made by the peoples in it acting eac h thro ug h its gove rn ment, or the delega te of that go vernment, as a unit of eq ual vo ting power regard less of the number of individual s in it. A union is a governme n t by the people: Its laws are made by the individuals in it acting each through his representatives as a unit of eq ual voting power in choosing and changing them, each state's voting power in the union gove rnme n t being ordinarily in close proportion to its population. A union may allow in one house of it s legislature (as in the American Senate) eq ual wei ght to the people of ea ch state regardless of population. But it provides that suc h representatives shall not, as in a league, represent the sta te as a unit and be under the in structi ons of and subject to re call by its gove rn­ ment, but shall represent instead the people of th e sta te and be answerable to them. Third, a league is a go vernment for govern me n ts or states: It is made for 9 the purpose of securing the freedom, rights, independence, sovereignty of each of the states in it taken as units eq ually. A union is a government for the people: It is made for the purpose of securing the fre edom, ri ghts, independ­ en ce, sovereignty of eac h of the individuals in it taken as units equally. To secure the sove re ign ty of the sta te a league sacrifices the rights of men to justice (as in the first point) and to equal voting power (as in the second point), whereas a union sacrifices the sovereignty of the state to secure the rights of men: A league is made for the state, a union is made for man. This may suffice to ex p lain the sense in which the terms democracy, union and league are meant in this book. FIFTEEN FOUNDER DEMOCRACIES In the North A tlan tic or founder democracies I would include at least th ese Fi fteen (or T en): The American Union, the British Commonwealth (specifically the , the Federal Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of , , the Union of South Africa, Ire­ land), the French R epublic, , the , the Swiss Confedera­ tion, , , and . These few include the world's greatest, oldest, most homogeneous and closely linked democracies, the peoples most experien ced and successful in solving the problem at hand - th e peaceful, reasonable establishment of effective inter-state democratic world governmen t. Language divides them into only five bi g groups and for all practical political purposes, into only two , Engli sh and French. Their combined citizenry of nearly 300,000,000 is well bal anced , half in Europe and half overseas. None of these democracies has been a t war with any of the others since more than 100 years. Each now fears war, but not one fears war from the others. These few democracies su ffi ce to provide the nucleus of wo rl d govern men t with the financial , monetary, economi c and political pow er necessary both to assu re peace to its m embers peacefully fro m the outset by sheer overwhelm ing preponderance and invulnerability, and prac tica lly to end the monetary inse­ cu rity and economic warfare now ravaging the whole world. These few divide among th em such wealt h and power that the so-calle d world political , eco­ nomic and monet ary anarchy is at bottom nothing but their ow n anarchy­ since to end it they need only unite in establishing law and order among themselves. T ogether these fifteen own almost half the ear th, rule all its oceans, gove rn n earl y half man kind. They do two-thirds of the wo rl d's trade, and most of this wo uld be ca lle d their domes tic trade once they united, for it is among themsel ves. They have more than 50 per cen t control of nearly every essential m aterial. T hey have more than 60 per cent control of such war essentials as oil, copper, lead, steel, iron, coal, tin, cotton, wool, wood pulp, shipping 10 •

tonnage. They have almost complete control of such keys as nickel, rubber and automobile production. They possess practically all the world's gold and banked wealth. Their existing armed strength is such that once they united it they could radically reduce their armaments and yet gain a two-power standard of armed superiority over th e powers whose aggression any of them now fears. The Union's existing and potential power from the outset would be so gigantic, its bulk so vast, its vital centers so scattered, that Germany, Italy and Japan even put together could no more dream of attacking it than Mexico dreams of invading the American Union now. Once established the Union's superiority in power would be constantly increasing simply through the admission to it of outside nations. A number would no doubt be admitted immediately. By this process the absolutist powers would constantly become weaker and more isolated. POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY Tremendous world power brings with it tremendous responsibility for the world. It is no use blaming today's chaos or tomorrow's catastrophe on Mussolini and Hitler and the Japanese militarists. It is still less use to blame the Japanese and German and Italian peoples. It has never been in their combined power to establish law and order and peace in the world. They are not the source of the danger our whole species now faces, they are only its first victims. They are already living on war bread, going without butter and meat, dressing in shoddy, suffering censorship, hysterical patriotism, propa­ ganda, forced loans, loss of liberty. They are today what we dread to be tomorrow. The anarchy among the democracies is already costing Germans, Italians and Japanese what it will cost us only if we let it go on . As Ambassa­ dor Bullitt put it in inaugurating the Lafayette monument at La Pointe-de- Grave, Sept, 4, 1938: It is not enough to observe with a sense of superiority the worst mistakes of the new fanaticisms. The origins of those fanaticisms lie in part in our own unwisdom. If our effort for peace is to achieve anything, it must be based on our ability to put ourselves in other men 's shoes> and recognize the truth of the saying, «There>but for th e grace of God, go I.» - When the really powerful members of a community refuse to organize effective government in it , when each insists on remaining a law unto himself to the degree the democracies, and especially the United States, have done since the war, then anarchy is bound to result and the first to feel the effects of the chaos are bound to be the weaker members of the community. When the pinch comes the last to be hired are the first to be laid off, and the firms working on the narrowest margin are th e first to be driven to the wall or to desperate expedients. That makes the pinch worse for the more powerful and n •

faces them with new dangers, with threats of violence. It is human for them then to bl ame those they h ave unwittingl y d ri ven to despera tio n, but tha t does n ot cha nge the source of the ev il. So it h as been in the world . The you nger democracies have been the first to go . T he first of the gre a t powers d riven to despera te an d vio len t measu res h ave been those with the sma llest marg in. There is no dou b t that the ir methods have since made matters worse an d that there is no hope in fo llowing th ei r lea d. T heir a utocratic gover nments are adding LO the wo rl d 's ills bu t they are not the real ca use of them.T hey are instead an effect of the anarch y among the powerful democracies. T he dicta tors are righ t when they' blame the dem ocracies fo r the world's con d itio n, but they are wrong when they blame it on democracy . The anarch y comes from the refusal of the democracies to renounce enoug h of their national sovere ign ty to let effective wo rl d law and order be set up. But their refusal to do this, their maintenance of the sta te for its own sake, thei r readiness to sac rifice the lives and liberties of the citizens rather than the independence of the sta te , - this we know is not democracy. It is the co re o[ absolutism. D emocracy h as been waning and a utocracy wa xing, th e rights of men lessening and the ri ghts of the sta te gro wing everywhere because the leading democracie s have th emsel ves led in practicing beyo nd their frontiers a utocracy instead of dem ocracy. Now many argue that the democracies must organize themselves or at lea st arm more h ea vil y because the a utocr acies h ave formed the Tria ngu lar Pact. It is true that the rising power of a u tocracy increases the need [or U n io n just as the spread of a con tagio us di sea se increases the need [or q uarantine and for orga n izing the healthy. . But it is essen tia l to remember that though the victims carry the di sease they di d no t ca use it, a nd that q uaran tine of the vic tims and organ iza tion of the healthy are aimed not against the victi ms but against the ep idem ic, the purpose be ing to end it both by restricting its spread and by curing its victi ms. U n io n does not seek to p u t the a u tocrac ies even in quarantine in any material sense; it seeks pri marily to orga n ize the h ealthy so as to overcome the disea se. It is wrong, all wrong, to conceive of U n ion as aimed against the nations of the T r ia ngle. There is a world of difference between the moti ves behind Union and those behind eit he r the present policy in ea ch democracy of arming [o r itself or the proposal s for alliance a m ong the democracies. For such a n n a­ m erit and suc h alliance are meant to maintain the one thing Union does attack in the one place Union does attack it - the autocratic principle of absolute na tional sovereign ty in the democracies. Unlike armament a nd alliance pol ­ icies, U n io n leads to n o cr usade agains t a utocracy a broad, to n o attempt to end war by war or make the world sa fe for democracy by co nq ue r ing foreign di cta torship. U n io n is no religion for tearing out the mote from a brother's

12 eye - and th e eye, too - while guard ing nothing so jealously, savagely, as the beam in one 's ow n eye. U nio n calls on ea ch democracy to remove it self the absolutism govern ing its re latio ns with the other democracies, and to leave it to the people of each di cta torship to decide for themselves whethe r they will maintain or overthrow the aboslutism gover n ing them not on ly externally but internally. U n io n provides eq ually for the protection of the democracies against attack by foreign autocracy while it remains and for the admission of each autocratic coun try into th e U n ion once it becomes a democracy in the on ly possible way - by the will and effor t of its ow n people. The problems the T riangular powers now raise, - eq uality, trea ty revision, raw material s, a place in the su n, the have and have-not struggle, - U n ion would put on a new ba sis, that of eq uality among individual men in stead of nations, th ereby rendering these problems infinitely sim pler and less danger­ ous. To attain the eq uality they crave the citizens of these absolutist nations would no longer ne ed to sacrifice their individual freedom to their nation's military power, they would need in stead to sacrifice dictatorship and military power to th e restoration of their own individual liberties. By gaining mem­ bership for their nation in the Great R epublic they would gain the equality they now demand and more, for they would enjoy precisel y the same status, rights and opportunities as all citizens of this Union just as do the citizens of a state admitted to the American Union. But, to become thus equal sovereigns of the world, they would first have to prove, by ove rthrowing their autocrats and establishing democracies at home, that they believe in and hold supreme the eq uality and fre edom of individual Man, regardless of the accident of birth. The attraction membership in the Union would have for outsiders would be so powerful and the possibility of conquering the Union would be so hopeless that once Union wa s formed the problem the absolutist powers now present could be safely left to solve it self. As their citizens turned these governme n ts into democracies and en tered the Union the arms burden on everyone wo uld dwindle until it soon com pletely disappeared. Thus, by the sim ple act of uniting on the basis of their own principle, the democracies today could immediately attain practical security while reducing armaments, and could pro ceed stead ily to absolute security and absolute di sarmament. They could also increase enormously their trade and prosperity, reduce unemployment, raise their standard of living while lowering its cost. The imagin ation even of the economic expert can not grasp all the saving and profit democrats would realize by merely uniting their democracies in one free trade area. They need only establish one common money to solve most if not all of today's more in soluble monetary problems, and save their citizens the tre- 13 mendous loss inherent not only in depreciation, uncertainty, danger of currency upset from fore ign causes, but al so in the ord inary day-to-day monetary exchange among the democracies. T he Union's money wo uld be so stable that it would at once become the universal medium of exchange - a world money far more than was th e pound sterl ing before the war. Merely by the elimination of excessive government, need less b ureaucracy, and unnecessary duplication which Union wo uld automatically effect, the democracies could easily bal ance budgets while reducing taxation and debt. To an appalling degree taxes and government in the democracies today are d evoted on ly to the maintenance of their separate sove re ignties as regards citizenship, defense, trade, money and comm unications. To a still more appalling degree they are quite unnecessary and thwar t in stead of serve th e purpose for wh ich we establish those governmen ts and voted those taxes, namely, the maintenance of our own freedom and sovereignty as individual men and women. By uniting, the democracies can serve this purpose also by greatly facilitat­ ing the distribution of goods, travel and the di ssemination of knowledge and entertainment. With one move, the sim ple act of Union, the democrats can make half the earth equally the workshop and the playground of each of them. Establishment of Union involves di ffi culties, of course, but the difficulties are transitional, not permanent ones. All other proposals in this field eve n if realizable could not solve temporarily this or that problem in war, peace, armaments, monetary stabilizatio n. These proposal s would be as hard to achieve as U nion, yet all together they could not do what the one ac t of Union would - permanently eliminate all these problems. T hese are p roblems for which the present dogma of nationalism is to bl ame. W e can not keep it and sol ve them. We can not eliminate them until we first eliminate it. WHICH WAY ADVANCES FREEDOM MORE? T h is does not mean eliminating all national rights. I t means eliminating them on ly whe re elimin ation clearly serves the in di vidual s conce rned, and maintaining them in all other respects, - not simply where maintenance clearly serves the ge ne ra l individual in terest but al so in all doubtful cases. The object of Union being to advance the freedom and individuality of the individual it can include no though t of standard izing or regimenting him, nor admit the kind of cen tralizing that increases gove r nme n tal power over him. These are evils of nationalism, and Union would end them. Union comes to put individuality back on the throne that nationality has usurped. Ever ywhere nationalism in its zeal to make our nation in stead of ourselves self-sufficing and independent is centralizing government giving it more and more power over the citizen's business and life, putting more and more of that power in one man's hands, freeing the govern me nt fro m its dependence on the

14 cin zen while making him more and more dependent on it - on the pretext of keeping him independent of other governments. Everywhere the national sta te has tended to become a super-sta te in its power to disp ose of the citizen , hi s money, job and li fe. Everywhere nationalism has been impoveri shing the ci ti zen with taxes, unemploym ent, depression, and poverty - it is the desert, not the jungle, - tha t stun ts varie ty in life, that sta ndard izes. Everywhere national ism is casting the citize n increa singly in militarism 's uniform robot mo ld . Union wo uld let us live more individual lives. I ts test for decid ing whethe r in a give n field gove rnment should remain national or become union is this: Which wo uld clear ly give the individual more fr eedom? Clea rl y the individ­ ual freedom of Americans or Frenchmen would ga in nothing from making Union depend on the British converting the United Kingdom into a republic. N or wo uld the British be freer for making Union depend on the Americans an d French changing to a monarchy. There are many fields where it is clear that home rule remains necessary for individual freedom, where the mainte­ nance of the existing variety among the democracies helps instead of harms the object of Union. It is clear too that a Union so secure from foreign aggression as this one would not need that homogeneity in population that the much weake r Ameri­ can Union feels obliged to seek. Our Union could affo rd to encourage the existing diversity among its m embers as a powerful safeguard against th e domesti c dangers to individual freedom. Just as the citizen co uld count on the Union to protect his nation from invasion or d icta torship risi ng from with in , he could count on hi s nation's autonomy to p ro tect hi m from a maj ority in the Union be coming locally oppressive. The existence of so many national au tonom ies in the Union would guara n tee each of them fre edom to experiment politically, economically, soc ially and wou ld save th is U nio n from the danger of hysteria and stampede to which more homogen eous unions are exposed. Cl early, individual fre edom requires us to maintain national autonomy in most things but no less clearly it requires us to abolish that au to nomy in a few things. There is no need to argue that you and I have nothing to lose and much to gain by becoming eq ual citizens in the Union while retaining our national citizenship. Clearly yo u and I would be fr eer had we this Great R epublic's guarantee of our ri ghts as men, its security against th e armamen ts burden , military servitude, war. It is self-evident that you and I would live an easier and a richer life if through half the world we could do business with one money and postage, if through half the world we were free to buy in the ch eapest market what we need to buy and free to sell in th e dearest market what we have to sell. . In five fields - citizenship, defense, trade, money, and communications- 15 we are sacrificing now th e individual free do m we could safely, eas ily have. On wh at democratic gro und can we defend this great sacrifice? W e make it simply to keep our dem ocracies indep enden t of each ot her. " 'e can not say th at we must maintain the sta te's autonomy in these few fields in orde r to ma intain it in the many fields wh ere it serves our freed om, for we kn ow how to keep it in the latter without kee pi ng it in th e former. ' Ve ha ve proved that in the Ameri can Union, th e Swiss Union, and elsewhere. Wha t th en can we say to justify our needless sacrifice of ma n to the sta te in these five fields, a sacrifice made on ly to ma intain th e nation for th e nation ', sake? H ow can we wh o beli eve the state is made for ma n escape the cha rge that in these five fields we are following the a utocratic princ iple th a t man is made for th e state? H ow can we pl ead no t guilty of treason to democracy? Are we not betraying our principles, our interests, our freedom, ourselves and our children ? ''''e are betraying too our fathers. They overthrew th e di vine right of kings and founded our dem ocracies not [or th e divine ri ght of nations but for th e rights of Man. Clearly absolute national sovereignty has now brought us to the stage where this form of government has become destructive of the ends for which we form government, wh ere democrats to remain democrats must use th eir right «to abolish it, and to institute new government, layin g it s foundations on such principles and organizing its power in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.s Clearly prudence di ctates that we should lay our new government's founda­ tions on such principles and organize it s power s in such form as ha ve stood the test of experience. Clearly democracy bids us now unite our unions of free men and women in one world Union of the free. THE ALTERNATIVES TO UNION Fantastic ? Visionary? What are th e alternatives? There are only these: Either the democracies must try to stand separa tely or they must try to stand together on some other ba sis than union, that is, they must organ ize th em­ selves as a league or an alliance. Suppose we try to organize as a leagu e. That means seeking salvation from what Alexander H amilton called «the political monster of an imperium in imperio.» We adopt a method which has just fail ed in the Leagu e of Nations, which before that led th e original thirteen American democracies to a similar failure and failed the Swiss democracies, the Dutch democracies, and th e democracies of ancient Greece . W e adopt a method which has been tried time and again in hi story and has never worked , whether limited to few members or extended to many, a method which , we shall see, wh en we analyze it later, is thoroughly undemocratic, untrustworthy, unsound, unable either to make or to enforce its law in time. Is it not fantastic to expect to get the 16 American people, after 150 years of successful experience with union and after their rejection of the League of Nations, to enter any league? Can any but the visionary expect us to go through the difficulty that organization of the democracies on any ba sis entails - all for what we know to be a political

I monstrosity? Suppose we try to organize instead an alliance of the democracies. But an alliance is simp ly a looser, more primitive form of league, one that operates secretly through diplomatic tunnels rather than openly through regular assem­ blies. It is ba sed on the same unit as a league, - the state, - and on the same principle, - that the maintenance of the freedom of the state is the be-all and the end-all of political and economic policy. It is at most an association (instead of a government) of governments, by governments, for governments. It has all the faults of a league with most of them intensified and with some more of it s own added. Though possible as a temporary stopgap an alliance, as a permanent organi­ zation, has never been achieved and is practically impossible to achieve among as many as fifteen states. The fact that the states are democracies makes a permanent alliance among them not less but more impractical and inconceiva­ ble. For the more democratic a state is, then the more its government is dependent on public opin io n and the more its people are loath to be entangled automatically in the wars of gover nme nts over which they have not even the con tro l a league gives, and the more it s foreign policy is subject to change. But the more all this is true of a state the harder it is either for it to enter an alliance or for its allies to trust it if it does. A big alliance being looser than a league, the fact that the democracies preferred the former would show the stre ngth of their desire to keep apart. That would further encourage their enemies to gamble on exploiting this separatist tendency till they overcame them and their satellites one by one. It .would not encourage them so much as the existing nationalism among the democracies which has already led the autocrats to invade China, Ethiopia, Spain, Austria and, practi cally, Czech oslovakia, but the difference would not be enough to matter. The best wa y to prevent war is to make attack hopeless. It will not be hopeless while the autocrats, who by their nature are gam blers with abnormal confidence in themselves and their luck, have any gro und left to gamble either that the democracies can be divided or that the inter-democracy organization is too cumbersome and loose to resi st sur prise attack. An alliance can not long make this gamble hopeless. The basic flaw in an alliance of democracies is the nationalist philosophy responsible for it. If the desire to avoid commitments is strong enough to prevent a democracy from forming a union or even a league with others, it will al so prevent its allyin g with them until the danger is so great and immi- 17 nent that the all iance comes too late to preven t war. The alliance may come in time to promi se to win a war that pure nationalism could not hope to win, and to win it at grea ter cost than could a lea gue. But it can not promise, as Union can, to prevent the war- and that is the main thing. Even the war danger be fore 1914 failed to dri ve the British and French democracies into a real alliance; they got no fu rther than a «cord ia l under­ standing.» It took three years of war then to bring them to agree on a supreme command. Now the war danger has driven the British to a much closer under­ standng with the French than in 1914, and they have already agreed on a supreme command. But by the time the rising threat from the other side drove them to this, Germany, Italy and J apan already felt too strong to be discour­ aged by it .And so the Anglo-Frenc h accord has utterly failed to remove the war danger. Even the world war after it engulfed the United States could not persuade the United States to ally with the othe r democracies; it would on ly «associa te " itself with them. If it is not visionary to expect the United States 0 enter an «entangling alliance" now, what is it ? «It is necessary,» declared Secret ary Hull, Aug. 16, 1938, «that as a nation we become increa singly resolute in our desire and increasingly effective in our efforts to con trib u te al ong with other peoples - always within the range of our traditional policies of non-entanglement - to the su p por t of the on ly program which can turn the tide of lawlessness and place the world firmly upon the one and on ly ro adw ay that can lead to enduring peace and security." By excluding all solu tio ns con trary to «our traditional policies of non-entan­ glement" this cham pio n of world law and order did not exclude union, for there can be no more traditional American policy than this; no American considers as an entanglement the union of the Thirteen democracies nor the union of their Union with the R epublic of T exas. By entanglement Ameri­ cans mean alliances and leagues; these are the solutio ns wh ich Secre tary Hull warns are excluded. But suppose the U n ited States could be brought into an alliance. On what reality re sts the belief that this wo uld prevent wa r with the opposing alliance? The la ck of machinery for reaching and exe cu ting international agreement in the economic and financial and monet ary fields in time to .be effective di d much to throw the world into the depression tha t led us through Manchuria and Hitler and Ethiopia to where we are today. What could be more fantasti c than the hope that any conceiva ble alliance could provide this machinery, or that wi thout this machin ery we can long avoid depression and war? THEW O RST ALTERNAT IVE Only one thing could be more visionary and fantastic, and that is the third possibl e alternative to U nion, the one that wo uld seek salvation in re jecting ]8 every type of interstate organization and in pursuing a poli cy of pure nation­ alism, - the po licy of isolationism, neutrality, of ea ch trustin g to hi s ow n armaments, m ilitary and economic. For if th e democracies are not to try to stand together by union or league or alliance, th e on ly thing left for them is to try to sta nd alone. Co nside r the experience of the powers th at have tri ed this alternative. Once each of the Triangular power s believed so much in it s stability to, stand al on e and in sisted so much on its right to be a law unto it self th at eac h defied th e League and left it. Each seemed at first to prove its case and win by th e ope ra tion . Yet in fac t th ey pro ved and won so little that th ey have all had to recant th eir princ iple of standing alone and organize themselves in a Tria ngular pact. T hey found th at neither th e things they seized alone­ Chinese territory, Eth iopian terri tory, Austria, the demilitari zed Rhineland and the right to arm without limit, - nor the fact that they acted ea ch for self made th em more secure. Each in stead now feels much more exposed than it did before. That has been shown by th e way they each soug ht security, first, by in creasin g their armaments and th en , when that failed to give them secu­ rity, by organizing th emselves more and more. When Mussolini took care to step into the Triangular past before daring to step out of the Gen eva Covenant he gave a vivi d example of how impossible nationalism has become and how much nations need to work together. At most the efforts of the Triangular po wers to become po litically and eco nomically in dependen t are not making them more independent, they are simply making them less dependen t on one grou p of states, the democracies, and more dependent on another group, th e T ria ngle. The more they develop these relations among themselves the more th ey will need to organize th em. Every sta te th ey succeed in adding to this gro u p can on ly invol ve th em more deeply in th e problem of how to organ ize it , - and they too have only these alternatives: alliance, league or uni on. T he experience of the U ni ted States shows tha t even the most powerful nations can not get what th ey want by isolationism . T he United States sought th rough the n ineteen twenties to preserve its peace and prosperity by isolation­ ism. I t did remain in peace, but isolationism can not be given cred it for this since Britain and followed the opposite policy of cooperation through th e Leagu e of Nations and they, too, kept ou t of war. As for prosperity, isola tionism failed to preserve it; depression struck th e United States hardest. H ard times led to war dangers which th e United States in 1935 sought to lessen by the neu trali ty varia tion of isolationism. It adopted the policy of advisin g potential aggressors and victims that it not merely wo uld not attempt to distinguish between th em but would furnish supplies only to the belligerent who could come, get and pa y cash for them. W hat has hap pened since this policy was adopted? Italy invaded Ethiopia and conquered with po ison gas. 19 Milita ri sm and fasicsm began fighting it out with democracy and com m un ism in Spain . J apan invaded a huge part of China, bombing almost ind iscr im i­ nately. Germany vio la ted the Locarno treaty, a n d got by b u llying all of A ustria and much of Czechoslovakia. The naval li mita tion treaties broke down, the League broke down, the Peace Pact and the N ine Pow er Pact broke down, all the world's pea ceful machinery broke down, a nd «recovery» sagged into «recession .» No «peaceful» years in modern times, n ot eve n those preced ing 1914, have been so full of war and so-charged with accu mulating dangers to peace as those since 1935. Even if it cou ld be argue d that the adoption of the American n eutrality policy did not help bring on the di sasters that fo llowed, the point is that it was adop ted to lessen the war danger. It must be ad m itted that there is much more danger of war now than there was when this policy was adopted, and so it must be admitted that it has already failed. The n eutrality' policy, moreover, wa s designed to require the least arma­ ments; it left only the American continent to be protected against the raids of belligerents who had the ships to carry off American goods but la cked the gold with which to pay for them. Yet the United States has n ever armed so heavily in peace time as it has since it adopted this policy. And the en d is not near. In proposing, Jan. 4, 1938, that Congress spend $99 0,000,000 on armaments, President R oosevelt referred «specifically to the possibility that, due to world cond it io ns over wh ich this nation has no con trol, I may find it ne cessary to re q ues t additional a ppropria tio ns for national defense. , . Clearly he did n ot ex pect this huge ex pen d iture to remove the ca use for it and p ut under con trol those «world conditio ns over which th is na tion has no control.» By the ti me Congress adjourned in June this expenditure had not on ly passe d the billion dollar mark but the Vinson Act h ad called for another billion to be spen t on naval constructio n alo ne.By O ct. 14 the press was reporting W ashington's intention to add another a nd bigger increa se to this p rogram. Yet has the U n ited Sta tes come nea rer to con troll ing world condi­ tions? ' Vhat reason is there to hope that it will ga in control of them by spending still more on its armaments? Need it not fear the opposite. I t is now spen ding twi ce as much on its arms as it did in 1933 a nd its con trol over world cond itions has meanwhile lessened. «F urtherrno re,s President R oosevel t added in his J anuary message, «the economic situation may n ot improve and if it does n ot I ex pect the approval of Congress and the public for additional appropriations» - additional to those of $1,138,000,000 h e then proposed for «recovery and reIief. » Again there was n o promise, only fear of failure. "Vi thin a few months President R oosevelt had tripled this figure, but still without a promise of success. What promi se cou ld there be since obv io usly the billions alre ady spe nt had not ach ieved their purpose? Plainly those 'worl d cond itions beyond the con trol of 20 even the United States endanger it economically as well as politically, plainly ga ined it ch iefly from these sources: The intense desire for peace and dread of the only hope for recover y as well as for security lies in ga in ing control ove r them , and plainly there is no hope of gaining it by national ac tion al one. H ere is a policy wh ich has had the ove rw he lming su pport of the American people, most of all in its basic isolationist principle. It has resulted in the national debtreach ing $38,000,000,000 while the national and worl d situations have darkened, and so it is p roposed to add more billio ns to the debt - and the proposal is accompanied with a warning that the failure may continue. Is not this proposal «fan tastic,» and is it not sane to propose instead that the democracies gain con tro l of their common world by organ izing effective gov­ ernment in it, b'y each bringing its part of the conditions now outside the con trol of the others under the common control of them all through Union?

THE MUNICH METHOD

Suppose we dilute this poli cy so th at only some democracies, such as the United States, , Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland seek peace and freedom in neutrality while othe rs, notably Britain and France, depend on alliance. This is what we are now doing. Suppose we continue on this road that led to Munich and put our trust in a Four Power pa ct or any other varia n t of the balance of power theory, Those to whom Munich brought hope of peace in our time seem to have war eve ry people showed in th e Sude te n crisis, the part this feeling played in preventing wa r, and the beli ef that Munich removed the most dangerous of the Euro pean ca uses for war. T h is belief seems based on Chancell or Hitler 's stateme n t that th is was his last European territoria l dem and, or on beli ef that all the rem aining questions can be settled now by furthe r great power «con­ sultatio ns» or by a «general sett leme n t» through conference of everyone on ever ything, or on beli ef th at since the great democracies would not fight for Czechoslovakia they will not figh t for states which do not have that dem ocracy's claim on their sympa th ies and which are now in the line of German expansion, -Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Rumania, Russia. There is no doubt that the immediate popular reception of Prime Minister Chamberlain's flight to Berchtesgaden and of the Munich agreement proved the existence everywhere of a powerful desire for peace. This helped prevent war th en , and it remains a power that must be taken into account in future as con tribu ting both po siti vely to facilitate the trend toward appeasement and negatively to brake the trend toward war. But if the mere existence of power suffi ced to get results we could r un our factories sim ply by making water steam; we would not need to bother abou t making machinery to cen ter the stea m on th e pi ston-head. 21 The Sudeten German crisis proved how deeply defective is our machinery for harnessing to peace mankind's will for peace. It was so defective that time and again that month millions thought war inevitable. Each time they found themselves saved by a miracle onlyto find themselves next week in need of a greater miracle to save them from its consequences. The magician who pulls rabbit after rabbit from an empty hat is sure to be applauded by the famished, and when he has nothing left to pull out except a rabbit's foot applause will be greater because the hunger and the willingness to believe in magic have grown greater too. By returning repeatedly to tremble on the brink of an abyss we may learn to balance better but we do not avoid the danger of falling. As Pope wrote of vice: War is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face We first endure, then pity, then embrace. The fact is that as the war danger has grown the readiness of every people to plunge into it has grown, too. When Germany occupied the Rhineland with a relatively small force in 1936 France did not call two classes to the colors, Britain did not mobilize the fleet and the United States did not inter­ vene to pin responsibility on Chancellor Hitler. They made these moves in 1938 after all the horrors of war in Spain and China had been drummed into them and after they faced a semi-mobilized Germany. How can we hope that we shall avoid war because we lived all September with the spectre of war, when the American people was not kept out of war but drawn into it by living three years with world war itself? Not only psychologically but militarily the world is readier for war now than it was before the Munich meeting. No aggressor will go to war in the hope of its being long-drawn-out; to attack he must gamble on winning quickly by overwhelming surprise. This gamble has proved wrong in Spain and China but that will no more keep others from trying their luck than deaths of climbers keep other men from trying to scale the Eiger Wall until they did succeed. To win a lightning war one must have a military force that is at once exceptionally well-prepared, exceptionally well-trained and exceptionally numerous; to defeat a lightning war all this is needed, too. Because this is the kind of war for which Europe must prepare and because neither side had had the dress rehearsal that is the sine qua non of success in such a fast and danger­ ous enterprise, I said to any who asked my opinion before and at the worst of the September crisis that I believed that there would be no general European war this year but a dress rehearsal that would leave th e danger of war next 22 -:

year much greater. Where governments once could be content with the practice gi ven by war games on the scal e of a division or an army corps, they must now practi ce on a far greater scale and test out too their machinery for mobilizing their army, their industry and their public opinion. The Sudeten German crisis allowed every great power in Europe to make these tests. Since then leaders in every country have been showing that Prime Minister Chamberlain spoke for them all when he told Parliament Oct. 6, 1938 : .One good thing at an y rat e has come out of this emergen cy through which we have passed. It has thrown a vivid light on our preparations for defence, on the ir stre ngth and th eir weakness. I would not think we we re doing our duty if we had not already or dered that a prompt and thorough inquiry should be made to cover the whole of our preparation s) military and civil) in order to see) in th e light of what happened during these he cti c days, what fu rther steps may be ne cessary to make good our defi cien cies in the shortest po ssible time. I do not say that the September scene was consciously staged by Machiavel­ lians, nor do I mean that it wa s never in danger of getting out of hand. I say only that the underlying situation t ended at that time to produce a dress rehearsal and to keep it one, and that as one re sult every government is now correcting the faults this ' test revealed in its war machine. Each is already much better prepared than it was in July for the lightning war it seeks to save itself wi th or from. There remains the beli ef that Munich ende d the most dangerous European cause for war. How can democrats base their hope for peace in our time on Chancellor Hitler's sta temen t that the Sudeten land is his last European terri­ torial demand. Before an schluss he promised to re spect Austrian inde pe n­ dence, during anschluss he had Marshall Goering reassure President Benes as he himself reassured the British Prime Minister in September, - and then at Saarbruecken O ct. 9, 1938 he boasted that he had made a New Year's vow to .himself to bring both Austria and Sudetenland into Germany. " A t the begin­ ning of this year,» he said, «I reached the determination to bring back to the Reich the 10,000 ,000 Germans who stood apart from us. " How can one trust a man who can keep his secre t vows to himself only by breaking h is public vows to others? Suppose that despite such questions as the Polish corridor we can trust Herr Hitler this time; can we reasonably ex pect one in his shoes to trust that Mr. Chamberlain will long remain Prime Minister? Does he not have reason for his fear in tha t Saarbruecken speech that «a Duff Cooper or an Eden or a Churchill" may come to power? H err Hitler obviously does not beli eve that even the Germans would keep his own regime in power were they free to choose; how can he trust the British people not to use their freedom to ch oose leaders who will sta nd agai nst him? H ow can pea ce be made on a basis of 23 mutual trust between democracies and dictatorships when the democracies can have no guarantee that the dictator will keep his word, and the dictator can have no guarantee that the democracies will keep in power those whose word strengthens him? Shall we depend on Four Power pacts and/or conferences to impose and/or negotiate a general settlement of all remaining questions? A Four Power pact excludes Russia from the meeting room but not from the world that the pacl must work in. The same is true of Japan and the United States. To omit Russia from the pact practically means removing Russia's weight from the Franco-British side while neither replacing it with the United States nor re­ moving Japan's weight from the othen side. It also means freeing Germany and Japan to absorb as much of Russia as they can. This would seem to be making not peace but the kind of power against which Mr. Chamberlain himself said he would fight. And what faith can we Americans have in such a method, even if it leaves us on the sidelines at our own demand? LEAVING "EUROPE» TO THE EUROPEANS In «leaving Europe to the Europeans,» do we not leave our peace and free­ dom to them too ? We see that if peace is upset in Europe we shall suffer too, but we do not seem to see that by the present policy we entrust our future blindly to Britain and France, we depend on their statesmanship to keep us out of war and on their arms to keep autocracy from invading America. We see the advantage of keeping our peace and freedom, but from the way we talk about never fighting again off American soil it is clear we do not see the advantage of the policy that has kept invasion from British soil since 1066. This is a policy of not waiting till the conqueror comes to lay waste one's home but of going out to stop him while he is far away and relatively weak. If we think it wise to warn the world that we will fight for our free ­ dom, is it not still wiser to add the warning that we will begin to fight for it on its European frontiers? It is better not to fight if one can help it, but if one must fight is it not better to fight away from home? Ifwe could trust the British and French governments to preserve our peace and freedom safely for us, yet to leave the burden to them alone would still be unworthy of us. And can we have this faith in them? Obviously we do not have it. We made that clear after what we called the «Hoare-Laval deal,». But did we improve things for ourselves by the paradoxical policy we then adopted of leaving our fate all the more in their hands by keeping ours tied with the neutrality act? Has it not led us straight to Munich? We may prove to the hilt that the European democracies are not up to our standards, but if so is that an argument for trusting the future of our freedom to them as we are doing? It may be that we are in position to sit by and find fault with the others who are at the dangerpoint, it may be that it is better that 24 those in our pos itio n should find fault than keep still - after all, if those who are in the most secure position do not speak ou t for what is r igh t who will? ­ all this may be tr ue, but the position it leaves us in is not always becom ing to a man. I can not say the Bri tish and French «sold out» Prague whe n they sough t nothing for it except a peace th at benefits me too. I can only say that if they sacrificed Czechoslovakia to save themselves from war they followed a lead we gave them lon g before. For wa s it not partly to save ourselves from having to go to wa r for Czech oslovakia that we refu sed the Wilsonian Covenant? I can not condemn Messrs. Chamberlain and Daladier, but I must ask those Ameri­ cans who condemn them as being both knaves and fools how they can then urge on us an isolationist policy that means trusting more than ever Europeans to save us from the conseq ue nces of war? Suppose that, instead of everyone depending for peace on a Four Power pact, we all turn back to the general conference method. It failed before under easier circumstances, but suppose it will succeed now - though this is sup­ posing to the point of dreaming. Success means the restoration to Germany of the Polish corridor, Memel, Eupen, colonies, al so the restoration of the international gold standard, the return to normal trade barriers, and so on. What guaran tee of peace is all that dream if realized? All that dream was already real once - in July, I914. ' Ve come to those who believe that the corner is turned for better or worse since democracies that would not fight for the only democracy east of Switzer­ land can not go to war to protect the oil wells of Rumania, or to save a Poland that re sorts to partition from perishing again by partition. Is this idea well­ founded either as fact or as a basis for expecting peace in our time? Consider but one thing: Munich leaves Europe with two «Belgiums,» No. I southwest and No.2 sou theast of Germany, and Britain has now promised to guarantee the neu­ trality and integrity of No.2 - though it is almost surrou nde d by Germany ­ as well as the frontiers of No. I. Belgium No.2 is stripped down now on the moral side to a democra cy that is purely Czechoslovak. The self-de termina­ tion principle is now all on it s side and it is strengthe ned by its self-sacrificing acceptance of the wron gs done it for the sake of peace. On the strategic side it is strip pe d down to the bones of the Bohemian quadrilateral round Prague of which Bismarck said , «W ho holds that, holds Europe. » That is why Czechoslovakia is to be neutralized. Its neutrality is made and is liable to to be broken for the same considerations that led to the creation and then to the violation of the neutrality of Belgium No. I. Czechoslovakia rem ains a strongly armed base in position to endanger on the left flank German aggressive expansion toward Rumania and the Ukraine and to enda nger on the ri ght flank German aggressive expansion toward the 25 Polish corridor Czechoslovakia can be turned in a twinkling into an air base from which the 'warplanes of Russia - excluded at Munich from the pledge to res pect Czech neutrality - can att ack the heart of Germany and harass or cut the comm unicatio ns of a German force attacking Russia through Rumania or Poland.A t the teeth of the upper jaw of Germany lies the great mining and industria l area of Silesia, at the teeth of the lower jaw lies Vienna. The di stance between these tee th - if they cut violently through Czechoslovakia ­ is about ten times shorter than their line of comm un ications while they go respectfully ro und the Bohemian quadrilater al. In these circu mstances can on e reasonably expect Chancell or H itler, who has ope nly proclaimed his aggressive intentions agains t Russia, to treat his Czech neutrality pledge as other than a scrap of paper the day his war with Russia starts? If he violates Czech neutrality Britain must then eithe r follow suit and treat as a scrap of paper its own guarantee of Czech neutrality against this very danger, or it must go to war against the violator. If it does the former its moral position is almost as bad as Germany's and its political and military positions become much worse than Germany's. Its position as the chief bul­ wark of democracy in Europe goes down, down and down. By this course it is accepting the one thing that Prime Minister Chamberlain in his moving radio broadcast Sept. 27, 1938, said he himself would go to war rather than accept: I am m yself a m an of peace to th e depths of m y sou l. A rmed con fl ict be­ tween nations is a nightmare to m e. But if I uiere convince d that an y nat ion had made up its mind to d ominate th e world by fear of its force) I sho u ld feel .that it must be resisted . Under such a domination life for people w ho bel ieve in lib erty wo uld n ot be worth living; but war is a fearful thing and we must be very clear) before we em bark on it that it is rea lly th e grea t issues th at are at stake . By the other course Britain and France would fight - but they would be fighting no more for Rumania or Poland than they fought in 1914 for Serbia. THE PERIL RETURNS - ONLY GREATER AND NEARER How can we but be alarmed at the Munich method of apeasem ent when its German partner who rose to power by tracing the evils we suffer to the T reaty of Versailles seeks to remedy them by practising in turn what he con­ demned? Germany was at least consulted at Versailles before th e signature of the treaty; Czechoslovakia was not even invited to Munich. If Versaill es can be called a di ktat ) what must Munich be called? How can those who believe eve n ts have proved that peace can not be made by dik tat) beli eve tha t peace in our time can be secured by the Munich mthod? How can we but be still more alarmed when the great cham pions of the Munich method have them selves ma de clear that their alarm now is 26 greater than it wa s before Munich ? ' '\Then in indorsin g M un ich Lord Ba ldwin came ou t in favor of the mobilization of British industry for war? W he n the great London newspaper th a t opened Sep tember, 1938, with a plea for a pl eb iscite in Sudetenland ended September by announcing and u pholding th e Munich accord in one column while ope ning in the adjoin ing column a cam paign for conscriptio n in Britain? Most alarming of all, Mr. Cham­ berlain himself told the H ouse of Commons Oct. 4, 1938: »For a long period now we have been engaged in th is country on a great program of rearmament wh ich is daily increasin g in pace and in volume. Let no one think that because we ha ve signe d th is agreeme n t between the four Powers at M unich we can afford to rela x our effor ts in re gard to that program at this moment.« In fin ish ing the debate Oct. 7 all he cou ld answer to the comments thi s provoked was to edge closer to conscrip tion, after saying: «I do indeed believe that we may yet secure peace in our ti me, bu t I n ever meant to suggest that we would do that by di sarming until we can induce others to disarm too." How is this to be done? In the same speech Mr. Chamberlain said, »1 say that it is no use to call a conference of the world, including these totali­ tarian Powers, until you are sure that they are going to attend, and not on ly that they are going to attend but that they are going to attend with the intention of aiding you in the policy on which you have set your heart.« Apart from trusting in »the universal aversion to war" as »the strongest argu­ ment against the inevitability of war,« Mr. Chamberlain in this speech based his hopes for di sarmament and peace generally on the following policy: »W hatJ is the alternative to this bl eak and barren policy of the inevita­ bility of war? In m y view it is that we shou ld seek, by eve ry me ans in our power, to avoid war by analyzin g its possible ca uses a nd by tryin g to re move them by discu ssing in a sp irit of collabo ration and good will. I can not believe that such a program wou ld be rejected by the people of the coun try even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with d icta tors, and talk, man to man, on the basis that each is free to maintain hi s own ideas of the internal governmen t of his country, willing to allow that other systems may suit better other people.« This is the sor t of thing in which British peace-lovers put the ir trust before the World War. They were arming then too, they were talking, then too, with Berlin man to man about di sarmament and tryin g to rem ove the causes of war-by, for example, secretly dickering to satisfy Germany's demand for »a place in the sun« with part of the colonies of Portugal, Britain's oldest ally. The parallel today with the period that preced ed W orld W ar once before in our time is on ly too clear. There is th e same' political and strategic balance between the war-breeding grounds of eastern Europe and the western Mediterranean, between the Dan- 27 ube valley and the Straits of Gibraltar. But where peace then trembled be­ tween th e annexation of Bosn ia and the Balkan wars to the East and the conflict over Morocco in th e ' Vest, it now trembles between Czechoslovakia and Spain . The ma in difference is that the danger has moved Nor th, closer to the heart of civi lization. T here are the same dramatic »peace« agreements, reached only more me lodramatica lly now beca use of more modern methods of communica tion and mass propaganda, with the same net results. But where the Agadir peace resulted in France making serv ice for three years ob ligatory for every man, th e Munich peace is no sooner signe d than Bri tain itself moves toward con­ scription. The main difference is that military servitude is mo ving "Vest, closer to th e heart of in di vidual freedom. T here are th e same fra n tic and vain last min ute appeals for a confe re nce by a po wer that allows th e aggressor to hope that it will not fight against hi m if he goes to war. But wh ere these a ppeals were made in 1914 by London , they are made now by Washington. This time they succeeded . When did Chancellor Hitler answer Presid ent Roosevelt's second appeal ? ' When was the »conference of all the nations directly interested in the present contro­ versy« that he then suggested held? The main change is that this time to get even to Agadir a President West of the Atlantic instead of a Foreign Minister West of the Channel had to beg for a conference. The ou tstanding change is that all along the line the catas trophe is devel­ oping on a greater scale and at a faster rate and mo ving N orth and West,­ nearer, nearer, nearer to ourselves. BALANCE OR UNBALANCE OF POW ER? The balance of power th eory that is preparing catast ro phe now as then ­ th ere is no more sterile, ill usory, fantastic, explod ed and ex plosive peace poli cy than the balance of power. Look at it. T ak e it apart. 'What does it mean in commo n words? It means seeking to get stability by seeking to eq ualize th e weight on both sides of the balance. One can conce ive of reach­ ing sta bility this way - but for how lon g and at the cost of what violent ups and downs before? And wh en th e scales do hang in per fect balance it takes but a breath, only th e wind that goes with a word spoken or shrieked in the Hitlerian manner , to end at once the stability, th e peace th at has been achi eved. Stability can never be more iridanger, more at the mercy of the sligh test mi stake, accident or act of ill will than at the very moment when th e ideal of the balance of power is finally achi eved. Who would ever suggest that we seek to keep th e peace in our town or state or nation by striving to arrange a perfect balance of power between law-keepers and law-breakers, between G-men and gangs ters? It is only when we let our fancies roam be yond the nation and out into th e world that we 28 indulge in such blundering buncombe - and it is precisely in this great field that a mistake is worse than a murder. We do not and can not get peace by balance of po wer; we can and do get it by unbalance of power. We get it by putting so much weigh t surely on th e side of law that the stronges t possibl e law-break er can not possibly offset it and is bound to be overwhe lmed. W e get lasting stability by havin g one side of the balance safely on th e ground and the other side high in the ai r. Eve n th e mome nt's sta bility w h ich the balance of power may theoret ically attain is a delusion since each side knows it can not last. Therefore nei ther · can believe in it and the nearer they come to it th e harder both must str uggle to p reve n t it by adding more weight on their side so as to enjoy the lasting peace that unbalance of power secures, - and the race is to the strongest. T he race is to the stro nges t, and the democracies, by scrapping all this balance of power and neutrality non sens e and directly seeking peace in the unbalance of power th at Union alone can quickly and securely give them, can still win, for they need but unite their strength to be by far the strongest. The problem facing th e democracies is simply on e of uniting their existing power, but the problem before the autocracies is to ge t that much power, and more, to unite. The spee d at which Germany, J apan and Italy have in creased their power in recent years has blinded many to this basic differen ce, and to the fact that despite all their ga ins the power of the three put together rem ains feebl e compared to the combined power of the fifteen dem ocra cies. The democracies can secure world control overnight without doi ng vio­ len ce to any on e or to any democratic principle. They need merely change their own minds, decide to sta nd togethe r as the Un ion in stead of apart, accomplish this simple act of reason. T he autocracies can do nothing of the kind. They can not possibly ga in world control overnight. N one of th em can add to its territory without doing violen ce to some one, and th ereb y offsetting the gain by making possession precarious and in creasin g oppositi on ever ywh ere, as each of th em ha s been doing: Non e of th em can keep th e power they have gained nor even that which they began with except by for ce,-not one of them can stand free speech even in hi s own capital. The autocracies can not unite their power under a commo n gover nme n t without each vio lating the totalitarian state's ba sic principle of th e su premacy of the state above all else. Their problem in gaining world con tro l is infin itely harder than ours, and th ey can not possibly solve it by their own strength, reason or genius. They are like an outclassed football team that can not hope to score - let alone win - excep t through the erro rs of the other side. Now that I have said why I am convinced that there is no hope for peace in the Chamberlain policy, I would express my admiration for h is courage and sincerity and my gratitude to him for having go ne to Berchtesgaden and Godesberg and Munich. I would express this no less stro ngly to Premier 29 Daladier who encouraged and supported hi m and to President Ben es and the Czech people who paid the bill. If I have my own reasons for believing that th e continuance of th is policy will be fatal both to our peace and freedom, I have also reason s others do not have for being grateful th at th is policy was followed in Sep tember . Its great merit th en was the reasoning in which Messrs. Chamberlain, Daladier and Benes really placed their faith, - that we all want both our peace and free dom, that we shall have sacrificed our peace on ce we go to war for our freedom, that by averting war this time there will still remain th e po ssibility of finding somehow a means of saving our peace and freedom both together. That reasoning is unanswerable, but it means th at we must lose no time no w in find ing that way through. The greatness of Mr. Chamberlain will be judged in the end by whether the catastrophe is definitely averted or only made greater in the breathing space he gained. It will be a tragedy if the courage Mr. Chamberlain showed in rescuing a drowning world in September should come to be forgotten through his having then finished it off by doing the wrong thing when he sought to revive it. I who believe I know th e way to revive it must remain grateful to him and to all th e others who have kept open the possibility of preserving peace and freedom th rough Union now. T HE TEST OF COMMON SENSE Because Union is a fresh solution of the world problem it appears to be something new. The deeper one goes into it, however, the better one may see that there is in it nothing new, strange, untried, nothing utopian, mystic. The fact is that we demo cr~ts have already strayed away from the road of reason and realism into the desert of make-believe and mysticism. We have strayed away seeking the mirage utopia of a world where each nation I S itself a self-sufficing world, where each gains security and peace by fearing and preparing war, where law and order no longer require government but magically result from keeping each nation a law unto itself, where the indi­ vidual's freedom is saved by abandoning at the national frontier the princi­ ple that the state is made for man and ado pting there the dogma that man is made for th e nation. It is proposed here that we have done with these dangerous delusions, th at we re turn to th e road of reason and seek salvation by tested methods, by doing again what we know from experience we can do. I ask nothing better than that we stick to the common interests of us individual men and wom en and to th e simpler teachings of common sense. Common sense tell s us th at it is in our individual interest to make the world safe for our individual selves, and that we can not do this while we lack effective means of governing our world . It tells us that th e wealthier, th e more advanced in machinery, the more

30 civilized a people is and th e more lib erties it s citizen s en joy, th e greater the stake th ey have in preventing depression, dictatorship, war. T he more one has, th e more one has to lose. Common sense tell s us th at some of the causes of depression, dictatorship, war, lie inside the nation and that others lie outside it. It tells us that our existing poli tical machinery has let us govern strongly the conditions of life within th e nation but not outs ide it, and th at all each people has done to overcome the dangers inside it has been blighted by its failure to re ach the dangers outside it, or remains a t the mercy of these ungoverned forces. Common sense advises us to turn our attention now to finding means of governing the forces still beyond our control, to constituting effective world government. It warns us that no matter how strong or perfect we each make our national governmen t, it can never end those outside dangers, and that we individuals can not know how long we can wait to end those dangers before they end us. Common sense reminds us Americans that we are part of the world and not a world apart, that the more we keep our lead in the de velopment of machines the more important to us we make the rest of the world, that we can not, without catastrophe, continue through good times and bad improving these machines while refusing to develop political machinery to govern the world we are thus creating. It tells us that th e principles of this Union of the fre e are th e principles that America was born to champion, that Ameri­ cans can not den y them and still remain Americans. For th e loyalty of the American is not to soil or race . The oath he takes when he enters the service of the American Union, is altogether to the principles of Union, »to support and defend the Constitution,«-a constitution that is already universally in its scope, that allows for the admission to its Union of any state on earth, that never even mentions territory or language, and that me ntions race and color only to provide that free do m shall never on that account be den ied to any man. THE AMER ICAN EXAMPLE Common sense may seem to say that th e American example does not apply, that it was m uch easier for th e Thirteen States to unite than it would be for the Fifteen Democracies today, th at the po ssibility of their forming a Union is now too remote to justify practi cal men trying to solve th e immediate prob­ lem this way. It may seem to say that one needs only consider curren t Ameri­ can public opinion to realize that unlike 1787 Union now is a dream that cannot possibly be realized for ma ny years, let alone in time to save us now. This seems convincing but is it so? I ' Amer ican opinion has al ways been remarkable .for seei ng from afar dan­ ger to democracy and quickly adopting the com mon sense solution, however remote and radica l, and d ifficult and dangero us it seemed to be . -W hat oth er

~ l people ever revolted at less oppression? Indepen dence was so remo te from American thou ght at the start of 1776 that it was not even proposed seriously until February, when Paine came out for it. Yet hi s Common Sense th en so swept the coun try that within five months the Declaration of Independence was adopted. To understand how difficult and remote the Union of the Thir teen States really was whe n 1787 began and how enco uragingly the example the y set applies to our democracies today, commo n sense suggests that we turn back and see the sit uation the n as con tem po raries saw it. »If there is a country in th e world wh ere concord according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is Ameri ca,« wrote Paine himself . »Made up as it is of people from different nations, accustomed to d iffere n t forms and habits of Government, speaking di fferent languages, and more di fferent in the ir modes of worship, it would appear that th e union of such a people was impracticable.« Conditions among the American democra cies of the Leagu e of Friendship were if anything worse than among ours today. As John Fiske put it , »By 1786, under th e universal depression and wan t of confidence, all trade had well-nigh sto pped, and po litical q uackery, wit h its cheap and dirty remedies, had full contro l of the field.« Trade di sputes threatened war among New York, Connecticut and New J ersey. T er ritorial di sputes led to bl oodshed and threat of war amon g New York, New Hampshire and Vermont, and between Connecticut and Pennsylvania. War with Spain threaten ed to break the League of Friendship in two cam ps. The Leagu e could not coerce it s mem­ bers. Threats of wit hdrawal from it were common. Its Congress often had no quorum, rarely had any mo ney in the treasury, could no lon ger borrow. The states issued wort h less currency, misery was rife, and courts were broken up by armed mob s. When these troubles culminated early in 1787 with the attempt of Shay's reb els to cap ture the Leagu e arsenal in Massachusetts so strong was sta te sove reign ty and so feeble the League that Massachusetts would not allow League troops to enter its territory even to guard the Leagu e's own arsenal. Washingt on had al ready wr itten to Jay in 1786, »1 am uneasy and apprehen sive, more so than during the war. « Everything seemed to justi fy the words of the contemporary liberal philosopher, .Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester: As to th e future gran deur of A merica) an d its being a rising em-pire under on e head ) whe ther republican or m ona rchical) it is one of th e idlest and m ost v isionary notions th at ever was conceived eve n by writers of romance. The mutual antipathies and clash ing interests of th e Americans) their differences of governments) habitu des) and manners) indicate that they will have no cen tre of union and no com m on in terest. They never can be united in to one compact empire under any species of gove rnment wha tever; a disu nited peo- 32 pie till the end of time> suspicious and distrustful of each other> they will be divided and sub -divided into little commonwealths or principalities, ac­ cording to natural boundaries, by great bays of the sea, and by vast rivers, lakes, and ridges of mountains. The idea of turning from league to union was so remote in 1787 that it was not even seriously proposed until the end of May when the Federal Convention opened. How remote it was may be inferred from the fact that the opening of the Convention had to wait ten days in order to have even the bare majority of the Thirteen States needed for a quorum. The Conven­ tion itself had been called by Congress merely to reform the League - «for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.» It was not deflected away from patching and into building anew until the eve of its session, - andthen only thanks to George Washington's personal inter­ vention. Even then Union as we know it now was more than remote: It was unknown, it still had to be invented. Yet once the Convention decided to build anew it completed this revolu­ tionary political invention within 100 working days. Within two years­ two years of close votes and vehement debate in which Hamilton, Madison and others, now called «men of vision,» were derided as «visionary young men» even by Richard Henry Lee, the revolutionist who had moved the Declaration of Independence in 1776, - within two years the anarchy-ridden; freedom-loving American democracies agreed to tryout this invention on themselves. Twenty months after they read its text the American people established the Constitution that still governs them, - but now governs four times as many democracies and forty times as many free men and women. It is really visionary to believe that the American people can still be trusted quickly to understand and act upon the common sense of Union? Can it be hard-headed reason that holds it easier for the American democ­ racies to invent and agree to tryout Union in the infancy of self-government than it is for our more mature democracies to adopt it now? It does seem practical to ask first how all the difficulties in changing from national sovereignty to Union are to be met. Yet the makers of the first Union were not delayed by such considerations. They abolished each State's rights to levy tariffs, issue money, make treaties, and keep an army, and they gave these rights to the Union without waiting for a plan to meet the difficul­ ties of changing from protection to free trade, etc. They did not even bother trying to work out plans .to meet all these difficulties of transition. And they were right in treating all this as secondary and leaving it to the Union itself to solve, for the lack of such plans neither prevented the swift adoption of Union nor caused any serious difficulty thereafter. Yet they lived in a time when New York was protecting its fuel interests by a tariff on Connecticut wood and its farmers by duties on New Jersey 33 butter, whe n Massachusetts closed while Connecti cut ope ned its por ts to British sh ippi ng, whe n Boston was boycotting Rhode Island grain and Phil­ adelphia was refu sing to acce p t New J ersey money, when the mo ne y of Con­ necti cu t, Delaware and Virginia was sound, that of all other States was vari­ ously depreciated and that of Rhode Island and Georgia was so wor thless th at th eir governments sought to coerce the citizens into acce pting it. In those days New York was mass ing troops on its Vermont fro ntier while the army of Pennsylvania was committ ing the atrocities of the "Wy oming mas- sacre» against settlers fro m Connecticut. . Can it still be said that the difficulties of transition to Union were sim­ pler then than now? That it was then more practical to ri sk establishing Union without a transition plan than to risk delaying Union until such a plan was made? That it is now more practical to delay Union at the risk of catastrophe than to adopt it at the ri sk of having some transit ion difficul­ ties? Common sense answers, No. Some factors, of course, made Union easier for the American democracies than it is for us just as others made it harder for them. Though it seems to me on balance that Union is much easier now than then, Lwould grant that it is hard to strike such a balance. But we can not have it both ways. Those who say that I am wrong, that conditions were so much more favorable to union of the American democracies then than they are for Union now, they are also saying implicitly that conditions then were also much more favorable than now to all the alternative solutions - league, alliance, or isolationism. If a common language, a common mother country, a commo n con tinen t and all the other things the American democracies had in common made union easi er for them than us, they al so made it easier for them to make a league succeed. If even they could not make a league work, then how in the name of common sense can we expect to do better wi th a .league than they did? Even if Union is harder now than then we know, at least, that we can suc­ ceed wi th it . Common sen se leads to this conclusion: If we the people of the American Union, the British Commonwealth, the French Republic, the Lowlands, Scan­ dinavia and the Swiss Confederation can not unite, the world can not. If we will not do this little for man's freedom and vast future, we can not hope that others will; catastrophe must come and there is no one to blame but ourselves. But the burden is ours because the power is ours, too. If we will Union we can achieve Union, and the time we take to do it de pends on' on ourselves.

34 Last Word When Aris tide Briand proposed hi s European Federation the similarity of many of the responses to it impressed me. T hey applauded, they said: "This is noble, this is what we all want," and they adde d , " Bu t there is this difficulty and that di ffi culty, and how is he going to meet the m?" They acted as if the ve teran French statesman, though in a much better pos ition than they to see the difficulties his proposal faced, had not foreseen the m and ne eded their help in seeing rather than in solving them. They im plied that all these difficulties were for him to overcome; they assumed the role of spectators who would not be affected if hi s project came to naught through his failure to overcome every difficulty himself. Even the depression that followed could not persuade these waiters-for-a-perfect-plan that this was an enterprise in which they were willy-nilly involved, that they too would be punished­ swiftly, mercilessly, increasingly - for failure to solve in time the problems on which Aristide Briand had made so brave a beginning. I am aware of many of the difficulties confronting the Union, and I have no doubt that there exist more than I realize. I know that this book has led . me into fields where others have a much greater knowledge than 1. No one needs take time to convince me that this book falls far shor t of what it should be, that it is weak indeed compared to the great enterprise it would promote. I regret that this book is not as clear, shor t, complete, well organized, free from error, easy to read and hard to controvert on every page as I - perhaps more than anyone - desire it to be. I feel, however, that I have reached the point of diminishing return for isolated work on its problem, and that time presses for an agreed if imperfect answer. My hope is that the book can now make at least the friends it ne eds, for if it can then I am sure that they can do far more than I to correct its faults and advance its purpose. One can not believe as I do in democracy and fail to believe that the surest way to bring out the true from the false and to accomplish any great enterprise is to get the greatest number of individual minds to working freely on it. The variety in our species is so rich that one can be sure in any such undertaking that one can do almost no detail in it so well as can some one else. Democracy taps this rich vein. It does so by recognizing that Man can not foresee which obscure person or lowly thing may suddenly become of the greatest value to Man, by setting therefore an equal value on every man and every thing, and by seeking to give equal freedom to every man to do the thing he best can do and trade it in the commonwealth for all the billion things he can not do so well. This is the meaning of democracy's great decla­ ration, All m en are created equal, and the reason why democracy's spread ha s led to the discovery of more and more truths and to the doing of greater 35 and greater enterprises. And so I ask you not merely to make known any error you have found in this book but to try yourself to solve the problem that it leaves. Since it was you who found the fault how can you know that you are not the one who can overcome it better than I, better than anyone? After all, are not your freedom, your prosperity, your security, your children at stake as well as mine? Is not the problem of world government your individual problem as well as mine? Can I alone organize the world for you any more than you can for me? Can any dictator do it for us? If you and I and the other man and woman working freely and equally together can not gain our common end, then how on earth can it be gained? For Man's freedom and vast future man must depend on nian. It is ours together, or no one's and it shall be ours.

36 Contents of "Union Now" Proposal I WHATT H IS BOOK IS ABOUT Union T he America n W ay T hrough Definiti ons Fifteen Founder Democracies Power and R esp onsibility Which Way Advances Freedom More? The Alterna tives to Union The W orst Alternative The Munich Method Leaving "Europe" to the Europeans T he Peril R eturns - Only Grea ter and N earer Bal ance or Unbalance of Power? T h e Test of Common Sense The American Ex ample

II PUBLIC PROBLEM N o. I : WORLD GOVERNMENT The Machine that R equires World Government The Internal or the External Problem ? What the R ecord Shows The Widening Gap What Reason Shows More Urgent than T re aty or Economic Issues III URGENT MOST FOR AMERICANS The Presen t Ameri can Po sition Where W e Are More Ex posed th an Europe More than M oney to Lose H ermit or Pi oneer? IV PATCHING ,,,rONT D O Patching the W orld Gold Sta ndard The Fact to be R etained Patching the L eague of N ations The T wo Sch ools The Futility of U n iversa l Confer en ce The Futility o f th e Big Collecti ve Alliaur e The Futility of Small R egion al Pacts 37 George Washington Could not Make a League Work The Need to Start Afresh V WHY START WITH DEMOCRACIES Needed: A Nucleus World Government The Nucleus Needs to be Democratic Fifteen Democracies as Nucleus The Close Cohesion of the Fifteen The Overwhelming Power of the Fifteen The Two Essentials Twelve to Twenty Founders Fewer than Fifteen? More than Fifteen? What of Soviet Russia? Universality of the Ultimate Goal Cooperation Meanwhile with Non-Members VI HOW TO ORGANIZE THE DEMOCRACIES Why the Choice Is Between Two Units Why the Unit Shapes the End Nation - The Modern Janus VII LEAGUE OR UNION? THREE TESTS I. The Super-State Test Why Leagues are Undemocratic Why Unions are Democratic Investing in Union Today's Super-state: The Nation 2. The Practical Test Why Leagues Can Not \'\Tork Why Leagues Can Not Act in Time 'Vhy Leagues Can Not Escape the Unanimity Rule Why Unions Can Act Swiftly 3. The Acid Test Why Leagues Can Not Enforce Law Why Lawbreakers are Immortal Where Trial Precedes Arrest The Fallacy of Bloodless Sanctions Judge, Sheriff, Criminal-All in One Result: No league Can be Trusted Why Unions Can Enforce Law How Unions Eliminate Inter-state War Vlll HOW THE UNION REMEDIES OUR ILLS Military Disarmament and Security Economic Disarmament Monetary Stabilization Communications Men, Jobs, Taxes, Government Dying Together or Living Together? IX ISOLATION OF THE GERM X THE UNION · How Far Shall We Unite? The Great Federal Problem Uniting to Decentralize How Shall We Unite? The Constitution of the Union What of India? Shall Colonies be Ceded to the Union? The Union Legislature Parliamentary or Presidential Government? The Executive The Judiciary The Amending Ma chinery Too "Eig-hteenth Century"? XI OF TIME AND FREEDOM The Eternal Question 1789 and Today XII TO GET UNION NOW Let Unionists Unite Postcard Plebiscite In Man Our Trust Man's Worst Weakness Declaration of Dependence Philosoph» XIII OF FREEDOM AND UNION Of Freedom Of Cain and Abel, Socrates, Jesus and Mohammed Of.Union Poem MAN Annexes 1. Illustrative Constitution 2. Transitional and Technical Problems of Union Citizenship Defense Money and Debts Communications Freeing $50,000,000,000 of Trade 3. How National Sovereignty Wrecked The Gold Standard The Short Term Flaw What Britain Did to Confidence What the United States Did to Confidence 4. How National Sovereignty Wrecked the Locarno Treaty 5. My Own Road to Union LAST WORD

Dorothy Thompson Says: Clarence Streit has had the courage to come out and advocate the only policy which can be considered as a world political program for democracy. The world already has a Comintern and a Fascintern. But the International of Democracy is, as Mr. Streit bluntly shows, a program of international anarchy. He proposes the beginning of a world organization based on the principles of the American Federalist-a union of peoples. The first re­ action to this book will be to say it is Utopian. But those who try to find a flaw in his reasoning will have a very hard time. Actually it is not nearly as Utopian, in the sense of impossibilism, as Hitlerism or Communism are. It is a program for saving democracy, not with guns, but by consequential action; it puts into the world a new, grandoise and imaginative idea with which to combat the ideas that are driving the world into chaos and war. It is a program which has experience to justify it-the program which saved this continent from chaos and inter-state anarchy at the end of the eighteenth century. It has precisely that combination of idealism, audacity and realism, the lack of which is the most serious handicap of Democracy. I hold it to be the most important book for international democracy written in this generation. Politicians will say that this cannot be done, but the ordinary man in the street will ask, "Why can't it? It makes.sense." Read it, get your friends to read it, and then ask yourself and them: "What's wrong with it?" 40 A Vast Economic Opportunity (From an editorial in the April, 1939, issue of Fortune) This book is of the utmost importance to all those who believe in what Fortune has been calling the libertarian system.... We have asserted that it is the task of the present generation . .. to study how economic opportunity, upon which alone free enterprise must rest, can be distributed more equitably to all. And the value of Mr. Streit's book is that it throwson this particular problem a new light - a white, daring light in which the troubles of our present era' are cast like fearful shadows against a screen: ... The votaries of liberty will lay this book aside with a sigh.. ... It will have conjured up a visionof the greatest political and economic opportunity in history, by com­ parison with which the opening of the North American continent was a modest beginning...... , . 'I .

Gigantic opportunities would be opened up. A. rise in the standard of living of millions of consumers would result from the expansion of markets and the consequent lowering of prices for mass-produced goods. Even a relatively slight expansion in their known market would enable.U. S. automo­ bile manufacturers (to take only one example) to cut prices, and cars would thus become available to more persons, not only in' the other states of the union but also at what we call "home." The economic history of the 'U. S. demonstrates that this process is cumulative and that it would almost"certainly result in lower automobile prices than even Mr. Ford has dreamed of, There would be an inevitable revival in shipping and .~n railroads, and hence in the capital-goods industries. behind them. Industrial unemployment .might, therefore, almost disappear. And at. the same time the union's agricultural products would obtain preference in union markets, as against the products of nonmember states. ." . .." i " "·". . '. . "-,. ~ .. . :: ." .' A genuine union of the democracies, then, opens up a vista of industrial growth to which the only enlightening parallel is the growth of the United States itself. At the time the American Union was formed the eighteenth­ century libertarian economists-were preaching free trade. And the abolition of tariffs within the borders of the U. S. provided for this doctrine the most spectacular practical demonstration that any economic theory has ever had. ... The proposed union could also protect itself from cheaper labor in 'the rest of the world and would also have plenty of undeveloped land and resources, .together with vast substandardi'domestic" markets to be .financed and built up...... ' . .' ; . There were thirteen independent nations' on this continent after the Revolution, and each was jealous of its own nationalism. The situation was .::.. in miniature and .with certain basic differences - analogous to the situation of the thirteen democracies now centering on the Atlantic Ocean... '. After a decade of econ?mic ~haos a few "visionaries'twho IackedYrealism" began agitating .for ', unioQ.~., . 'T hesewere the one~ whom, we } 10 W revere as ,great "realists." . ", .. '.,

Visions sometimes come true. The Talk of the ·f\.tIantic- Union Nl»JI

'A great idea•••. The time seemstripe, - Henry S. Dennison, President, Dennison Mfg. Co., Massachusetts. Must be published without .delay 'in French. - Firmin Roz, Membre de . l'Institut, Paris. Of historical, permanent value. - Count Sforza, Ex-Foreign Minister, Italy. Swell.- Walter Wincltell, New York. ' I welcome this bold effort to go back to the one practical effort in govern­ ment which still seems to promise a way out. - Maj. Gen. Frank R, McCoy, U. S. Army, retired. . An outstanding contribution 'to constructive thinking. - James T. Shot- well, New York. , . The most important book to appear in my memory. - Liong} C~rtis, a founder of the Union of South Africa. . I read it from cover to cover in a state of high excitement•... Time is of the greatest importance and I hope that our leaders Will move to irtake effectiveaunion of the democracies nowl I have become an ardenrapostle of the idea. - F~ A. Silcox, Chief of the U. S. Forest Service. '" Unanswerable. - Leonard Lyall, Geneva. In Union Now many people will read fol' the first time the boOk they wanted to write themselves for such a long time. - Siegfried Charoux, the Viennese sculptor, now a political exile in London. "; ~ i '._ ! ~ It deserves the same kind of reception as that given to The Federalist.- Manley Hudson, Judge in the World Court, The Hague. ' . ~ :'. Its conclusion is one that we ourselves 'have often drawn fro~ events: the need, the urgent need of the union of the European and American democ- racies. - La Depeche de Toulouse, France. ". .;.; ,.- i ... Stands in the direct succession from Washington and the Fathers of the

American Constitution, the writers of The Federalist and. Abraham....Linc()ln.., . - Lord Lothian, London. . I like it. I shall watch its progress with p~ide ' and delight. ...:. William Allen White, Emporia, Kansas. ~ An amazingly interesting idea. - Robert Wolf, . Consulting Engineer, Longview, Wash. . I am tremendously impressed. Such a .000k leads the horse up to the water and there is no measuring the power of suggestion. -- Alexander Woollcott.