“UNION NOW”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 November 1939, Page 7

“UNION NOW”

WORLD REORGANISATION PROBLEM OF PEACE. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS No doubt the prayers for peace which have risen from the hearts of mankind recently have been couched in a variety of terms as well as of languages, writes H. B. Elliston in an exchange. Some have prayed merely for the prevention of physical hostilities. Others have prayed for the end of the hostilities which have been eating away at what H. A. L. Fisher called the “seamless garment of civilisation” under the guise of a white war. I have been among these latter. For only in that happy event can we work for the mobilisation of men’s minds to the task of living together in harmony. Josiah Royce, President Roosevelt's great teacher at Harvard, put the task in a vivid passage. He said we have “to make visible the community of mankind.” Visibility has been pretty low ever since the World War came to an end. A peace then “broke out” which further Balkanised peoples ready for a working association. It is true a Lea-; gue of Nations was established at Gen-, eva But as a war veteran I could never feel that the League expressed what I’d been fighting fbr. For the member States, instead of laying down their arms, proceeded to furbish them up again, on the principle (transmitted to the League) that the world could be saved by coercion. In other words, the world fell back upon arms and the man instead of opining the Carlylean epic of tools and the man. Now, while the commentator is giving place to the reporter, I've been thinking over this peace problem. A text is urged upon me by many read‘ers of “Union Now,” by Clarence K. Streit. Mr Streit, who is a former “New York Times” reporter, puts his finger on the bane of our international existence. This is national sovereignty based upon national armaments. A study of the League on the spot revealed to Mr Streit this error carried over into the League. Member States refused to abate their sovereignty and reduce or pool their arms in the interest of a world society.

It was foolish, as we look back upon the experiment, to expect a world society to function under the aegis of armed sovereignties. Every delegate I have ever heard in Geneva seemed anxious to conserve his country sovereignty in any international broil. Only one man ever stood out as an exception. This was Lord Robert Cecil, now Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, who on occasion spoke critically of his own government. (He did not last long as a delegate,.you may be sure). The rest simply spoke for their governments against others; not for a world society. It followed that as soon as they were expected to act as a world society, they flew apart, and left Geneva with the framework which mankind one day will have to fill in anew. Mr Streit shows that on any such foundation there would never have been an American union. The States first came together in the manner of the League of Nations. They established a League of friendship without giving up their "freedom, sovereignty, or independence.” This League lasted only 11 years. Then Alexander Hamilton and the founding fathers set out to prove that a league of Sovereign States would never hold together unless the Stales composing it surrendered enough powers to give authority to the Federal Government. So it must be. according to Mr Streit, with a world society. His World Federal Union would not be the creature of jealous governments, but the creation of the people, who would vote for delegates on the same ballot paper containing the claimants for national and local offices.

Readers, even those not obsessed with ideas of sovereignty, will nc doubt see a lot of snags in this visionary proposal. But at this time one's mind fastens on visions rather thar on obstacles. James Russell Lowell said that natural science once was faith, and all government once was faith, too—faith that man could sc limit his individual sovereignty as to set up laws governing hie conduct to be administered by representatives of his own choosing. A world society has become more than an act of faith. It is the logic of human organisation. No foreign observer of early American society, for instance, dreamed that the disparate peoples of those days would ever get together in a political union. Josiah Tucker, an English cleric, described such, a thing as "one of the idlest and most visionary notions that ever was conceived even by writers of romance.” He said: “They never can be united into one compact empire under any species of government whatever: a disunited people till the end of time, suspicious and distrustful of each other, they will be divided and subdivided into little commonwealths or principalities, according to natural boundaries, by great bays of the sea and by vast rivers, lakes, and ridges of mountains.” Yet nothing seems more logical today than the American Union.

Still no vision is ever realised withjout the application of common sense, and it would mean frittering away

valuable energy not to work toward world union on the fundamental of little by little. The first step is to get rid of discrimination in international intercourse. As members of a nation are equal before the law. so nations should be equal before an international law. Secretary Hull, in line with George Washington's advice in his Farewell Address against "favours" international dealings, would begin this restoration of international law in the field of commerce. His evangel is called the unconditional form of the most-favoured-nation clause —in itself, as I have said often enough., a world compact.

The building of the Streit edifice of necessity begins with the democracies because as yet the dictatorships will not acknowledge any law beyond Iheir own arbitrary rulings. Their State, in Hegel's words, is "God walking on earth." That is to say. there can. be. no higher court beyond the national frontier. Alas! our behaviour since the World War ended has contributed to this apotheosis of the state by our fighting tariffs, our economic and financial discrimination, our closing of the open door of raw materials. Bui the ending of the white war might make visible the community of mankind even in the dictatorships. If will not do so. however, unless visibility is first improved among the democracies. This war scare, surely, has furnished another demonstration that our outside or extranationnl life has become the dominant factor in our national and our individual lives. Our financial pages with their record of enterprise broken off attest the fact. It is evident to my way of thinking, that we shall have to mend our international life somehow if we wish to realise ourselves as individuals.