The Case for Union

Federal Union is an organization formed (in July 1939) for one purpose: to push Clarence Streit's plan for a union of 15 democracies, as laid out in his book, Union Now. Last week Federal Union had 60 U. S. chapters, 60 more being organized, was cooperating with similar organizations abroad. The British organization had 250 chapters, 10,000 members. U. S. Federal Unionists were winding up a $250,000 fund-raising drive, had 3,000 college-student and faculty members, were in the midst of a campaign to form Federal Union groups in labor unions. Outside such organized groups, Federal Union had "adherents" whose number nobody could estimate -- people who had not contributed money but who read its literature, spread its faith. A Gallup poll last week estimated that 8,000,000 U. S. citizens, thinking of the post-war world, believe in an international federation of some such kind as Federal Union advocates. In its busy na tional and regional offices Federal Union ists were confident that they were at last solidly organized and growing fast.

So was Clarence Streit. Born in Missouri 45 years ago, one of the first U. S. soldiers to reach France after the U. S. declaration of war in 1917, he was attached to the U. S. Peace Delegation in Paris in 1918-19 (where one of his jobs was to lock up secret documents that diplomats carelessly left lying around). Demobilized, Clarence Streit remained in France, studied at the Sorbonne and Oxford, worked as a newspaperman, married a French girl, fathered a son and two daughters, covered the Riff war, wound up as the New York Times correspondent in Geneva (1929-39) just as the League began its, catastrophic fall. Streit got his basic plan for Union Now after studying the shortcomings of the League of Nations for ten years.

Clarence Streit had read much about the U. S. Constitutional Convention, had pondered on the miraculous transformation of the U. S. from the squabbling days of the Articles of Confederation to the peace and growth that came after the Constitution was adopted. How had it come about? Working forward from the Constitutional Convention, and backward from the failure of the League of Nations, Clarence Streit found the demon: national sovereignty. So long as nations dealt with each other as government-to-government, he decided, no league of sovereign states, no system of pacts or alliances between sovereign states, would work. But when the people of the different governments were united in a Federal Union, with the states retaining their rights and differences, the gain to the world could be as great as was the gain to the U. S. after it accepted the Constitution.

Clarence Streit's first book was rejected by publishers, rewritten four times. He was printing a private edition of 300 copies when commercial publishers grabbed it. Total worldwide sale now: 50,000 copies. Last week he brought out a new book, Union Now With Britain (Harper; $1.75), proposing an immediate course of action.

Method. Ultimate objective of Federal Union would be a world federation of democratic states. For a beginning -- the U. S., the United Kingdom, Eire, New Zealand, Australia, Union of South Africa, Canada. Pending a Constitutional Convention, Author Streit would set up an Inter-Continental Congress with one representative for each member democracy, plus an additional representative for every 5,000,000 inhabitants. (The U. S. would have 27 votes, the remainder 22.) Until direct elections of intercontinental congressmen could be arranged, the President could appoint them, with Congressional approval, or let Congress pick them from a list of Presidential recommendations. (Streit suggests Wendell Willkie, Herbert Hoover, James M. Cox, asks readers to suggest other names.) This Union would be empowered to handle foreign relations, establish a common currency, common citizenship, common communications in the Federal Union. All powers not specifically granted the Union would be retained by each state: the state could be socialist or capitalist, a republic like the U. S., a monarchy like Britain. But each would have to conform to a Bill of Rights, grant freedom of speech, of worship, of the press, the right to peaceful assembly.

Executive of this Inter-Continental Congress might be a five-man board, might be a single chairman: President Roosevelt or Prime Minister Churchill. Clarence Streit likes the idea of two men, like Roman consuls, and names them: Roosevelt and Churchill.

Constitutionality? Only a Congressional resolution, says Streit, is necessary to establish Union Now. Congress would still legislate domestic affairs, and although it would surrender a few powers to the Union, these are less than it will be compelled to surrender under the concentration of power in the executive if the U. S. goes to war. under any other structure.

With Union established, says Streit, Hitler could be blockaded in Europe ; the conquered nations could be given an incentive to throw off his rule ; the Axis powers could be tempted to come to terms individually with the Union. With Union established, no nation could make a separate peace, as France surrendered, any more than New York could have surrendered its army when that State was invaded by the British in the Revolution.

Author Streit is sanguine. He does not look too hard at the difficulties, suspicions, confusions, the interests that would be threatened, the prejudices that would be aroused: he wants democrats to be up & doing to solve these problems, to sharpen their wits, meet their obstacles, let their imaginations flower. Most powerful chapter in his book asserts that in recent history the U. S. has not played a heroic part. "Our policy has brought upon us the gravest economic, social, monetary, political and moral dangers Americans have ever faced."

Whether or not Union Now With Britain blueprints the future, it reawakens U. S. readers to the political miracle that was worked when the Founding Fathers hammered out the greatest single U. S. contribution to human welfare in the history of government. The success of the U. S. under that Constitution made the U. S. the hope and inspiration of most of the rest of the world. Clarence Streit is convinced that the hope will never die unless the U. S. itself loses faith in the things that made it great.

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