No Union Now

Distances have narrowed since 1895, when U. S. Secretary of State Richard Olney declared that 3,000 miles of ocean "make any permanent political union between a European and an American State unnatural and inexpedient." A tacit London-Washington Axis is already a fact. Many British subjects, and not so many U. S. citizens, hope the Axis may eventually become a Union. Clarence K. ("Union Now") Streit, who once advocated union of all the democracies, now advocates union of the U. S. and the British Empire, about all that are left.

But many British subjects, and many more U. S. citizens, fear that something of this sort may come about without their knowing it. Britons, particularly, remember that in the last days of the French Republic their Government offered union to France without consulting Parliament (TIME, June 24). Last week in the House of Commons Laborite Richard Rapier Stokes put Britons' fear into a question. Would his Party's Leader and Lord Privy Seal in the Churchill Cabinet, Major Clement Richard Attlee, "give assurances that before any union of the kind proposed to France be put forward, he will give an opportunity for the fullest possible discussion by the House?"

Replied Major Attlee: "If ever any such far-reaching scheme is put forward . . . every opportunity will be given for discussion by the House."

The people of the U. S. need no such assurances. Union with the British Empire would require a Constitutional amendment or a new Constitution.

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