[ p. 224 ]
THE mob has no ruler more potent than superstition.”
Observing the human race running amok against their own interests today, exposing their own families, their own cities, their own people and their own countries to destruction, one must sadly admit the correctness of these words of Curtius.
[ p. 225 ]
No ultramodern composer could produce shriller dissonance, more chaotic atonality, greater cacophony, than the public discussion raging on the surface of the real problem.
This debate upon the future world order presents nothing but credulity and sterility on one side and on the other nothing but destructiveness and sterility.
Credulity is not faith.
Destructive criticism brings neither revolution nor progress.
Let us examine some of the more popular arguments raised against the rule of law among the peoples.
In any democratic world organization having power to create law, China would have three times as many representatives as the United States, India ten times as many as Great Britain, Russia five times as many as France. Would the United States, Great Britain, France and the other smaller democratic countries be willing to enter into such a scheme?
Population figures are held up, like a scarecrow, to frighten us away from our objective.
No Chinese or Indian ever sought representation in any international organization on the basis of population.
This very question was hotly debated whenever and wherever representative government was established In the United States of America, although the population of the state of New York i$ 122 times larger than that of Nevada, they both send two Senators to Washington. Even in the House of Representatives, the state of New York elects only forty [ p. 226 ] five times as many representatives as Nevada, a third of what it should, according to population figures. It is natural that in any universal organization created today, representation should be determined by actual responsibilities and according to effective power, industrial potential, degree of education. Various proved methods exist and can be applied to work out this purely technical question.
The very raising of this question shows how little the problem is understood. Under the present system of absolute national sovereignty 130 million Americans, 45 million Britons and not quite 40 million Frenchmen are each faced with about two billion other peoples, whose actions and policies they cannot control or influence in any crisis anyway, except by means of war.
Under a system of universal law, within a universal legal order, America, Great Britain, France and every other individual nation would, for the first time in history, have legal power to influence the actions of other nations constituting more than ninety per cent of mankind and could have a voice in shaping the behavior of other peoples in their own best interests—without war.
There is not the slightest danger that, in a world of realities, within a legal order, China with her numerical superiority in population could outvote the United States of America, as long as the real power relationship between the two, countries is as it prevails today. But, at some future date, should China become industrialized to an equal extent with America, should China be able to produce three [ p. 227 ] times more consumer goods, build up and maintain a mechanized army, navy and air force three times greater than the United States, then naturally and under any circumstances, power and influence would shift automatically from the United States to China.
If a universal legal order is functioning when such an eventuality occurs, then the change will take place peacefully, without violence, by legal adjustments, by shifting of votes and influence. If there is no universal legal order, then a China three times more powerful will attack, defeat and conquer the United States.
Realities can never be circumvented by sleight of hand. Our choice in adapting our society to existing and changing realities is merely between law and violence. We never have a choice between change and immobility.
Another objection is that should an international police force be established entirely independently of the nation-states and under the sole authority of a world government body, it would have to be larger than the armed forces of any one nation-state. Would the United States, would the Soviet Union, would Great Britain be willing to see an international armed force greater than their own?
This question also misses the point In the past and present scheme of things, the combined armed forces of the other nations those of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, etc.—were always considerably larger than the armed forces of the United States. The totality of armed forces of all the nations has always been imquestionably [ p. 228 ] greater than those of any independent sovereign nation. And sovereign nations have had absolutely no control over this overwhelming military superiority of the other nations.
Only through the establishment of a universal force to maintain law and order and to prevent violence between nations, would the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and any other country, for the first time in history have direct authority over the armed forces of other nations, be in a position to exert influence over them and have a voice in their use.
Objections of this sort to the creation of an international legal order are endless. They all run along the same line. All are based on the misconception of national sovereignty, holding to the misguided notion that by establishing a universal legal order we give up something instead of creating something. They are blind to the fact that it is under the existing system of absolute national sovereignty that the peoples are living under a sword of Damocles, subjected to dire dangers against which they seek effective and permanent protection.
Few people feel that they have “surrendered” their freedom in allowing the policeman on the street corner to carry the gun. Of course, in the jungle or on the American frontier a hundred years ago, nobody could safely have given up his gun. But life without a gun in a society having a legal order is infinitely more secure than life with any number of guns in 3 society without a legal order.
Many people assert that any world-wide social organization is bound to fail because nations are fundamentally [ p. 229 ] disinterested in other nations and are unwilling to participate in other peoples’ affairs. This superficial idea lies at the roots of any policy of neutrality or isolationism.
Isolationism is a most natural impulse. Every individual, every family, every nation, once having reached a certain position, a certain degree of satisfaction, wants to “be left alone” and “not to be disturbed” by strangers or outsiders. This natural drive is the root of conservatism. It has existed at all times in all powerful countries and in all wealthy classes. It is not a national but a social characteristic. It exists in every country, wherever men live together in groups.
The grandparents of the most stubborn isolationists of Missouri and Wisconsin were pioneers, explorers, adventurers, who went out into foreign lands, exterminated the native inhabitants, took possession of their lands and settled there. If ever in human history there was an act of unprovoked aggression, of unlawful intervention it was the American conquest of the West. Three generations later, the descendants of these expansionists and interventionists have become conservative isolationists.
There is nothing wrong with isolationism. But there is something very wrong indeed with what today is called the “isolationist policy”: the policy of Lodge, Borah, Johnson and Wheeler, who thought that the American people could live a secure isolated life through what they called “isolationist policy.” They presumed that America could mind its own business, be left alone and might pursue the American way of life, if only the Federal government of the [ p. 230 ] United States maintained its untrammeled national sovereignty and if the sovereign Federal government kept away from any foreign entanglement and commitment.
Within the span of a single generation, two world wars into which the United States has heen dragged against the will of Its people prove conclusively the bankruptcy of such a policy. It also proves the failure of "splendid isolation’ 1 in England and of neutrality in Holland, Belgium and many other countries.
The reasons are apparent. Where can an individual live an isolated life? Certainly not in physical isolation in a tropical jungle. There he has to be on guard day and night to preserve his life and to fight beasts and savages ready to prey on him. A man can live an isolated life much more easily in a civilized city where his security is guaranteed, where there is a legal order, where laws, courts and police watch over his physical existence and individual rights.
Quite certainly no nation can safely live its own isolated life in the jungle of the present world. The alternative is not “isolation” or “intervention in the affairs of other nations” If this were the case, and if nonintervention in foreign affairs could protect people from foreign wars, then isolationism would unquestionably be the soundest policy. But the alternative is a different one. It is “isolationism” or “the prevention of intervention by other nations in one’s own affairs.”
For instance, it seems elementary that the first condition to safeguard the rights of the American people to live their own way of life, is security against foreign [ p. 231 ] attack, the certainty that German submarines cannot sink American ships and that Japan cannot attack American territories by surprise.
The policy advocated by the exponents of isolationism and neutrality is the policy least apt to achieve such security from foreign aggression or intervention. Only a constitutional organization regulating the relations between nations by law and strong enough to protect the nations against foreign attacks would permit the people to “be left alone” to “mind their own business” and to pursue their own way of life, as is desired not only by isolationists but by the overwhelming majority of all peoples.
Perhaps long-range robot bombs and radio-propelled heavy bombers will open the eyes of those who have always made their political principles dependent on geographic distance.
Certain people are fearful of broadening the powers of government, asking whom we could possibly trust to decide upon issues so vast and vital. Such fears are very well founded indeed. Upon careful examination of our contemporaries, it does seem that there is no one to whom we could blindly entrust any important public office.
If people in the late eighteenth century could have discussed the vast powers embodied today in the office of the President of the United States of America or that of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, they would probably have decided that such offices should not be created, as no man would be trustworthy or able to hold them. But we have learned that the question of leaders is of secondary importance. In a well-organized [ p. 232 ] and smoothly functioning democratic society, where the duties and responsibilities of offices are clearly defined, a great number of men capable of serving as high officials are always available. There is no need to worry about who would be members of a world parliament, a world court or a world executive. Once the proper, democratically controlled machinery is established, we can safely resort to the oldfashioned method of electing ordinary, fallible, mortal men to office.
Any political system in which the fate of the people depends upon the wisdom or shortsightedness of leaders is fundamentally wrong. Great statesmen are so rare, and among the few born such an infinitesimal number ever get to power, that we cannot rely upon leaders of genius. We must resign ourselves to being governed by mediocre men. Our salvation lies not in the wisdom of leaders but in the wisdom of laws.
But how are the suggested transformations in the political construction of the world possible, when the loyalty and allegiance of all peoples go entirely to their nation, their country, their national flag? How in 1940 could Winston Churchill have stopped the tide of Nazi conquest and aroused the English people without appealing to their national pride—their loyalty to king and country?
Certainly he could not have done it But neither would it have been possible for Adolf Hitler to have aroused the German people and to have driven them toward brutal aggression and conquest’without appealing to their national pride and loyalty to their Reich and flag.
[ p. 233 ]
Nationalism undoubtedly helped to defend England and to inspire the heroic underground resistance against German conquest in France, Poland, Norway and other Nazi-occupied countries. But these beneficial effects of nationalism are similar to the effect of an antitoxin. Because the diphtheria bacillus is necessary to prepare the serum to fight diphtheria, this does not justify calling the virus itself beneficial or useful. At the present stage of bacteriology, the best we can do to cure diphtheria is to use its virus for the preparation of an antitoxin. But it would be much better to destroy and exterminate the causes of diphtheria, even if, at the same time, we destroyed the agent to cure the disease.
Many times in history we have seen how easy it is to change allegiances and loyalties. Within a few short years, a mixture of every nationality in the world created the American nation and, in the second World War, the grandchildren of German immigrants have been the leading military commanders of the United States armies against Germany.
We cannot expect loyalty to an institution that does not exist The institution must be created before we can demand loyalty to it
There is no reason to doubt that once universal institutions are established which bring people security, peace, wealth, which unite them in common ideals and common interests, the loyalty of the peoples, today claimed by the inefficient institution of the nationstate, will infallibly turn to them.
Real patriotism, real love of one’s own country, has no relationship whatsoever to the fetishism of the [ p. 234 ] sovereign nation-states. Real patriotism can have but one single purpose: to protect one’s own country, one’s own people, from the devastation of war. As war is the direct result of the nation-state structure, and as modern aerial and mechanized warfare indiscriminately destroys women, children, cities and farms, the nation-state is Enemy No. 1 of patriotism.
Once larger units are established as sovereign social units, there is no reason why nationalism, in its original conception of patriotism, could not and should not continue to flourish. Real patriotism actually needs the protection of law. As soon as people realize that in fact the ilation-state institution destroys their countries, devastates their provinces and murders their kinsmen, true patriots will revolt against that institution, a threat to everything they love. Nothing is more incompatible with true patriotism than the present nation-state structure of the world and its inevitable consequences.
“If, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mastery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask thfc fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted. Wholly repugnant to the general freedom are such devices as enthralling men’s minds with prejudice, forcing their judgment, or employing any of the weapons of quasi-religious sedition; indeed, such seditions only spring up, when law enters the domain of speculative [ p. 235 ] thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned on the same footing as crimes, while those who defend and follow them are sacrificed, not to public safety, but to their opponents’ hatred and cruelty.”
These lines from Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico Politicus strikingly characterize the tragedy of our generation, with its noble patriotism degenerated into blind veneration of the nation-state idol.
Nothing can destroy the nationalist fetishes, prejudices and superstitions except the explosive power of common sense and rational thinking. Only a struggle in our minds can prevent further struggles on the battlefields.
The main reason advanced by our present government officials, legislators and political philosophers for continuing the nation-state structure, with all its disastrous consequences, is that people are “different.” We are told that people cannot form a political entity until they are first “united in spirit,” that it is impossible to shift loyalties and allegiances from national to supra-national objectives, that Latins and AngloSaxons, Slavs and Germans, and the many other racial, linguistic and national groups cannot be merged into a unified organization or placed under a common law.
These arguments, reiterated only too often by the most prominent representatives of the nation-states, are the shallowest of all contemporary sophisms.
Of course people are different.
If they were or could be “united in spirit,” we would need no legal order, no state organization at all. It is precisely the differences between men, the profound differences of character, mentality, creed, [ p. 236 ] language, traditions and ideals, which originally necessitated the introduction of law and a legal order in human society.
The assertion that the manifold differences existing in the human race prevent the creation of universal law and order is in flagrant contradiction to facts and to past and present realities.
Poles and Russians, Hungarians and Rumanians, Serbs and Bulgars, have disliked and distrusted each other and have been waging wars in Europe against each other for centuries. But these very same Poles and Russians, Hungarians and Rumanians, Serbs and Bulgars, once having left their countries and settled in the United States of America, cease fighting and are perfectly capable of living and working side by side without waging wars against each other.
Why is this?
TTie biological, racial, religious, historic, temperamental and character differences between them remain exactly the same.
The change in one factor alone produced the miracle.
In Europe, sovereign power is vested in these nationalities and in their nation-states. In the United States of America, sovereign power resides, not in any one of these nationalities, but stands above them in the Union, under which individuals, irrespective of existing differences between them, are equal before the law.
The Germans and the French have distrusted and disliked each other and waged wars against each other for centuries. If any two peoples are different, they [ p. 237 ] are indeed two different peoples. Their language, mentalities, ideals, methods of thinking, ways of life, present great contrasts. If any two nations would seem incapable of unity, they are Germany and France.
And yet, situated between the powerful French and German nation-states—whose citizens have been warring with each other throughout their history live about one minion Frenchmen, as Gallic as any in the French Republic, and nearly three million Germans, as Germanic as any in the Reich, who have been living side by side in peace for long centuries while their kinsmen in the neighboring French and German states have periodically conquered and destroyed each other. The biological, racial, religious, cultural and mental differences between the inhabitants of Geneva and Lausanne, on the one side, and Bern, Zurich and Saint-Gall on the other, are exactly the same as are the biological, racial, religious, cultural and mental differences between the inhabitants of Paris, Bordeaux and Marseille on the one side, and Berlin, Munich and Dresden on the other.
Only one difference exists.
The French people in France and the German people in Germany live in sovereign nation-states where sovereignty is vested respectively in the French nation and in the German nation. la Switzerland, sovereignty is vested, not in the French nationality nor in the German nationality, but in the union of both, under which citizens belonging to either nationality enjoy equal protection, equal rights and equal obligations.
[ p. 238 ]
It seems, therefore, crystal-clear that friction, conflicts and wars between people are caused, not by their national, racial, religious, social and cultural differences, but by the single fact that these differences are galvanized in separate sovereignties which have no way to settle the conflicts resulting from their differences except through violent clashes.
Conflicts created by these very same differences within the human race can be solved without violent clashes and wars whenever and wherever sovereignty resides, not in but above the conflicting units.
That mankind will ever be “united in spirit” or in interests is an utterly meaningless contention. It is not even desirable that such uniformity of manland should ever be achieved. Uniformity would mean the end of culture and civilization.
The belief that the world can be united by a single movement—a religion, a language, a political creed, an economic system—has been predominant in the minds of fanatics all through history. It has been tried and tried again and has invariably failed. No conception is more erroneous than to believe that man must first be united in religion, culture, political outlook, economic methods, before he can be politically united in a state, a federation or any unified legal order.
Any attempt to impose one single cultural, religious, economic or philosophical conception upon all mankind is preposterous and implies an aggressive and totalitarian world outlook. The wide diversity among men and groups of men in the fields of philosophy, art, religion, language, political and economic methods, [ p. 239 ] constitutes the very essence of culture. These differences not only should be cherished but must be protected in every possible way. All through history, however, such differences have always been selfdestructive when the different groups enjoyed absolute sovereignty and were not protected by a higher source of law.
A universal legal order, so badly needed by the world today, far from endangering in any way these cultural differences, is the condition for the maintenance and continuous thriving of such differences. Without union, either the Scots would have exterminated the English or the English would have exterminated the Scots, just as the Romans destroyed Carthage and the Huns destroyed Rome. Within the United Kingdom, the Scots are more Scottish in their traditions and character, and the English are more English in theirs, than they ever were before that union when they were killing each other.
Another fallacy is that two different economic systems, two different conceptions of economic order, such as Communism in Soviet Russia, and capitalism in the West, cannot be integrated within one system of law, within one society.
In France, England, Switzerland and Holland, the telephone, telegraph, electric light services and many other economic operations are conducted on a communist basis, owned by the state or other communal collectivities, just as in the Soviet Union, and aie not private enterprises as in the U.S.A. On the other hand, textile, chemical, machine tool and other factories in these very same countries are privately owned [ p. 240 ] as in the U.S.A. and not owned by the government as in the U.S.S.R.
How can collectively and privately owned enterprises coexist in one state, under one system of law? Very well indeed, as the example of Engknd, France, Switzerland and Holland prove.
Even in the United States, the most completely capitalist-individualist country, we see government created and government-owned enterprises operating smoothly and advantageously side by side with private enterprises, as the Tennessee Valley Administration and many other public works demonstrate. And should the people of the United States some day decide that the Federal government take over telephone service from the Bell Telephone Company, telegraph service from Western Union, railroads from the many individual private companies, this would in no way endanger or interfere with private ownership and privately managed industries in other fields.
Different economic conceptions, different economic systems, can perfectly well coexist within one political and social system, under one sovereignty. In fact, the only way they can coexist peacefully is within one legal system.
The widespread belief that any unified legal order between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies is impossible because of the fundamental differences in their economic systems, is no more valid than the century-old prejudice that Catholics and Protestants could not live peacefully in the same community.
What makes the Communist economy of Soviet [ p. 241 ] Russia “dangerous” to the West, and what makes the capitalist system of the Western countries “dangerous” to the U.S.S.R. is not the difference in their economic systems but the fact that these different economic systems are incorporated in different sovereign states and are separate sovereignties. It is the Soviet nation-state that is a threat to the West and it is the Western nation-states that are a menace to the Soviet Union. Not because of hostile intentions, but because of their very existence as sovereign units.
Conflicts between these sovereign nation-states are inevitable, not because of differences in their economic methods and in their economic systems, but because of the nonintegrated sovereign power of the divided social units.
In every document, agreement, charter or communique they issue, our statesmen stubbornly persist in declaring that they want peace by safeguarding and guaranteeing “the sovereign equality of all nations.” They are unable to realize the contradiction inherent in this eternally repeated, meaningless slogan. The coexistence of social groups with equal sovereign power is precisely the condition of war, the very condition that can never, under any circumstances, bring peace.
Far from being an obstacle to a unified legal order, the differences between the Russian and Western economic systems mate an over-all, unified, sovereign legal order imperative if we want to prevent a violent clash between them.
One thing is certain. No number of joint dedarar tions of good will, military alliances, mutual non [ p. 242 ] aggression pacts, divisions of spheres of influence, conferences between the leaders, banquets, toasts and fireworks, will ever prevent the impending and inevitable clash between sovereign social units.
The major and most widespread argument against the establishment of inter-national law is that it “just cannot be.” There is no gainsaying the logic and the practical demand for such a world order, but it “just cannot be. . . .”
No debate is possible with this class of eternal skeptics. They bring to mind an old story. According to legend, Pythagoras, after his discovery that the sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right angles, out of gratitude to the gods sacrificed one hundred oxen. Since that time, all oxen become panicstricken and low in fear when anything new is in sight.
All those nationalist forces which, in 1919, fought against Wilson’s League, after having witnessed its inefficacy during two decades, now f ervently advocate its restoration in the form of another organization composed of sovereign nations.
The argument of those who want a repetition of this historic failure is indeed strange. They say:
Our purpose is to prevent a third world war.
Any measure proposed which would involve delegation of parts of the sovereignty of the peoples to democratically controlled bodies higher than the nation-states is impractical because:
Such proposals would not be accepted by the present governments of the nation-states.
[ p. 243 ]
The persistent opposition to reason and logic in political matters from those who have no other argument but “practicality” is the most vulgar manifestation of human mind and behavior. It would never be tolerated if the conduct of human affairs were based on principles and guided by reason.
If our purpose is to prevent another world war, then the practicality or impracticality of a proposed method can be judged only in relation to the object sought: Can it or can it not prevent another world war?
It is nonsense and illogical to say that a method proposed to prevent another world war is impractical because of a third element in this peculiar logical construction, namely: because it will not be accepted by the national governments now holding power.
If our purpose is to devise methods acceptable to the existing governments of the nation-states, there can be no disputing that only methods acceptable to these national governments are to be regarded as practical.
But then let us be frank and say that such is our purpose.
Let us not continue to mislead the public by saying that such methods will prevent a third world war. They will not.
What is the meaning of the word “practical” in political affairs?
Is it something that is actually happening, which is actually being done in our lifetime? In this case, nothing is more practical than war. Misery is practical, suffering is practical, lolling, deportation, oppression, [ p. 244 ] persecution, starvation are essentially practical. It would seem that our endeavor should be to eliminate these practices from society. They are inseparably linked with the nation-state structure of society, of which they are the direct outcome.
How is it possible to measure the practicality or impracticality of an ideal, of a doctrine, of a program aimed at eradicating these evils, by whether or not they are acceptable to the very same institutions from which emanate the evils we seek to destroy?
Those who cannot understand the fundamental difference between a universal legal order and a league or a council usually urge us to be “practical.” If the people and the governments are not ready or willing to accept more than a council composed of sovereign nation-states, then let us at least take that, runs the argument. Let us make a first step, a beginning.
It is most reasonable to start by taking a "first step/’ The trouble with league-council proposals, however, is that a league or a council does not initiate anything.
It is not a first step. It is a continuation. A continuation of error, of a fatally bad and disastrous policy.
It is a negative step. It is a step away from our goal. If we want peace between the nations, then a council of sovereign nations takes us backwards. A council of sovereign nations artificially prolongs the life of the nation-state structure and in consequence is a step toward war.
The “practical men” who preach that a world organization of sovereign nation-states is a realistic approach [ p. 245 ] to our problem are the finest specimens of those eternal political reactionaries Disraeli once defined: "A practical man is a man who practices the errors of his forefathers/’
The innumerable international conferences, which are held almost every month, are nothing but the epileptic convulsions of the incurably infirm system of nation-states. Every few weeks a new crisis arises in which “public opinion” childishly clamors for another meeting of the leaders, expecting a miracle—an agreement between the national governments that would cure the disease. Every time, they get an empty, insignificant “communiqué” that poultices the immediate pain for a while, but within a month 6r less, another issue becomes acute, for which no remedy is known except another conference.
All these meetings of representatives of sovereign national governments are bound to be futile, as they take place on a level altogether different from where the real problem lies. Within such a council of sovereign nation-states, no other course is possible than that which has been followed in the past.
And we know that nonintervention in international conflicts always and necessarily means positive intervention on the side of the stronger belligerent to the detriment of the weaker.
We know that the policy of “balance of power” can maintain peace between nations only so long as power is not in balance. Only as long as one nation or one group of nations has supremacy over the other. In such a system, as soon as power between the two [ p. 246 ] opposing groups is really “in balance,” war is imminent and inevitable.
And we also know that the policy of spheres of influence is bound to develop into a policy which seeks influence in the spheres of others.
It is in the light of these facts that one can judge the value of the new term which is supposed to have a devastating effect upon those who have had enough of living under constant threat of being murdered, robbed, persecuted and oppressed by the nation-states and who would like to five a civilized life in peace under law. The term is: “Perfectionism.”
Anyone who does not believe in the “first step theory” of the United Nations Organization is branded a “perfectionist.” And “perfectionism” of course, is the most dangerous of all political vices.
No one knows when a universal legal order will be achieved and no doubt all who are striving toward that ideal would be perfectly satisfied with a modest “first step” toward it. But the fact is that our governments have not even indicated an intention ever to take a first step in that direction.
A man wanting to go from New York to Rio de Janeiro, who discovers after leaving the harbor that he has been taken on a boat headed for Southampton, cannot find much consolation in learning that the boat will make a “first stop” at Cherbourg. He is being taken in an opposite direction to that which he wishes. Is it dangerous perfectionism if he insists that it is not to Cherbourg but to Rio de Janeiro that he wants to go?
War is the result of unregulated contact between power units.
[ p. 247 ]
Regionalism will only accelerate the tempo of war. If we organize sovereign nation-states in regional groups, then all nations of a region will be in contact with all nations in the other regions, and if relations between the regions remain on a basis of regional or national sovereignty then we shall have war.
Did the German Reich, the regional federation of the German states, bring peace? Has the regional federation of England, Scotland and Wales, or that of the forty-eight American states protected their peoples from war?
Most assuredly, these regional federations stopped once and for all the wars that had raged between the once sovereign units that had merged to become a federation. Since their union, the peoples of the newly formed regional sovereign federations no longer needed to go into battle against each other. But together, as a regional unit, they continued to be exposed to war, for the identical reason that had caused wars among themselves, before their federation. Irrespective of the federations of regional groups, there continued to exist several sovereign power units with which the regional federations were not integrated and with which they remained in contact.
Today, the interdependence of all the nations on this small planet is so complete that federations of regions although they would end wars within the federated regions—cannot possibly protect the peoples from violent conflicts between the different federations, if each regional unit remains sovereign unto itself and if the relations of these sovereign regional units continue to be regulated, not by law but by the old, fallacious methods of diplomacy, foreign policy [ p. 248 ] and representation in an inter-national or inter-regional council.
The problem is not how to bring together nations which are neighbors, which are of similar heritage and which like each other. The problem is how to make possible the peaceful coexistence of peoples who are different and who dislike each other.
Those who can find no argument against the logical and urgent necessity of transforming the institutions of national sovereignty into institutions capable of creating and maintaining law, not only within nations but also between them, and yet are reluctant or unwilling to accept responsibility, seek escape in the argument that the time is not yet ripe for such reforms. Perhaps in five hundred years. . . . Perhaps in one hundred years Perhaps during the next generation—they waver. But not we and not now.
The truth is that ever since the beginning of the twentieth century these reforms have been overdue.
If we used our brains for the purpose for which they were created—for thinking—and if we let our actions be guided by principles arrived at by rational thinking, these changes in our society would have been carried out before the events of 1914. The outbreak of the first World War was the clearly visible symptom that this opportunity had been missed and that the crisis resulting from the clash between realities and institutions was entering an acute stage.
The series of violent upheavals and concussions which, following the first World War, for the first time in history simultaneously engulfed the entire [ p. 249 ] globe in an ever-increasing crescendo, oilminating in the unparalleled explosions of the second World War, are symptoms which show, more clearly than any man could describe, the inadequacy, inefficiency and senility of the institutions by which we allow ourselves to be governed.
The same Winston Churchill who, when the darkest hour was over and the Battle of Britain won, subscribed to the Atlantic Charter and all the other documents and declarations that are leading us astray and strengthening the nation-state structure for the next war, once performed an act of statesmanship which makes any excuse for taking the wrong course now seem perfectly ridiculous. In the hour of gravest peril, when Hitler’s hordes were victoriously trampling the soil of France, on the very eve of French capitulation, on June 16, 1940, the British Ambassador to France handed the following draft declaration to the French government:
At this most fateful moment in the history of the modern world, the Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make this declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in then: common defence of justice and freedom against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves.
The two Governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations but one FrancoBritish Union. The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial and economic policies. Every citizen of France mil enjoy immediate citizenship of Great Britain, every British subject will became a citizen of France.
[ p. 250 ]
Both countries will share responsibility for the repair of the devastation of war, wherever it occurs in their territories, and the resources of both shall be equally, and as one, applied to that purpose.
During the war there shall be a single war Cabinet, and all the forces of Britain and France, whether on land, sea or in the air, will be placed under its direction. It will govern from wherever it best can. The two Parliaments will be formally associated.
The nations of the British Empire are already forming new armies. France will keep her available forces in the field, on the sea, and in the air.
The Union appeals to the United States to fortify the economic resources of the Allies and to bring her powerful material aid to the common cause.
The Union will concentrate its whole energy against the power of the enemy no matter where the battle may be. And thus we shall conquer.
This proposal of union between France and Great Britain embodies the fundamental principles of future society, as opposed to the principles of the past expressed in the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Atlantic Charter, the Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco documents. And it was a concrete, official proposal made by the British government, presided over by Winston Churchill, to the government of the French Republic. Of course, it came at a hopelessly inopportune moment. Fiance had already received a death blow from the German Army. The Third Republic was disintegrating. A few hours later it died.
In view of this historic event, how can it be said that “the time is not yet ripe” for measures which [ p. 251 ] were actually and officially proposed by the British government to the French government, as the only salvation in a desperate extremity? Is it too much to expect that people Who, at the point of death and when it is too late, are willing to take the remedy, will make use of that very same remedy when still in possession of their full senses and when there is still time for it to be effective? Or must we become resigned and admit that Plato was right in saying that “human beings never make laws; it is the accidents and catastrophes of all kinds, happening in every conceivable way, that make the kws for us”?
The institution of the sovereign nation-state has been dead now for several decades. We cannot revive it by refusing to bury the corpse.
There are a number of people holding high government office or chairs in universities who understand perfectly the underlying problem of peace but who indulge in the puerile excuse that "the time is not yet ripe/’
History never asks rulers and representatives of an existing regime when they will consent to institute the reforms made necessary by progress. Those who have succeeded, rarely see the need for change nor of what it will consist. Often in the past, reforms that seemed imminent were delayed for centuries; on the other hand, reforms regarded as Utopian became realities overnight. The great majority of the living never realize the fundamental changes taking place during their lifetime.
How can we expect from our governments and from the self-appointed interpreters of public opinion [ p. 252 ] in universities, in radio or in the press, any greater insight into what is going on today than was shown by their predecessors in other similarly revolutionary eras? Those who can visualize the realities of tomorrow only in things and beliefs already existing today will never be able to solve our problem, will never be capable of searching for principles nor of shaping the future according to the principles of tomorrow.
Anatole France tells this wise and profound story in Sur La Pierre Blanche:
In the days of Nero, in the prosperous Greek city of Corinth, the Roman proconsul Gallion, was discussing the future of the world with some of his Roman and Greek friends, statesmen and scientists. TTiey all agreed that nobody believed any longer in the old gods, neither in Egyptian, nor Babylonian, nor Greek, nor Roman gods. The question was raised: What will be the new religion? Who will succeed Jupiter? The distinguished and cultured gathering spiritedly debated the chances of about a dozen new gods, when the delightful conversation was interrupted by a noisy quarrel between a strange, haggard Jew one Saul or Paul of Tarsus and a rabbi of the synagogue who accused Paul of revolutionizing the existing law. After the unpleasant incident, Gallion and his friends spent a few moments discussing the queer and ridiculous faith that this Paul was spreading, the teaching of an obscure Jewish prophet called Chrestus, or Cherestus, who had caused so much trouble to another Roman proconsul in Judea. One of the guests jokingly wondered if this Chrestus might not succeed Jupiter. The idea greatly amused [ p. 253 ] everyone. They unanimously agreed that this would be absurd indeed. The chances were all in favor of Hercules. . . .