Variations by Schuman

DESIGN FOR POWER--Frederick L Schuman--Knopf ($3.50).

This book confirms reports that Clarence Streit (Union Now with Britain) has converted Frederick L. Schuman (Night Over Europe). Since some 5,000 readers faithfully buy all Professor Schuman's books on current history, his conversion must be taken as something of an event. It may also be taken as a timely warning of what happens when an idea like Union Now falls among doctrinaires.

The first 289 pages of Design for Power recapitulate the recent history of Japan, the U.S., five European countries. Says Professor Schuman on page 290: "The gentle reader who has come thus far in these ungentle pages will doubtless by now be weary and not a little puzzled. A story of grief and pain seven times told is tiresome and baffling. No sane man or woman relishes any such morbid preoccupation with crime and folly."

Whether they relish it or not. Author Schuman sees that they get it, for he belongs to the totalitarian school of liberals and this is his way of saying: Boo! He wants his readers to understand that the history of Europe's last decade is going to be the history of the human race for an unforeseeable future--unless they do something drastic about it soon.

Schuman ascribes part of the present chaos to the paradox that the world is an economic unit but a political jigsaw puzzle. "Anarchy in world politics," he says, "is incompatible with unity and order in world business and world civilization. One or the other must go." He also sees an even more important fact--that "the central issue of World War II is not the issue of whether the world of the 20th Century shall achieve political unity. It is the issue of who will build that unity, on what foundations and for what purposes."

Shall such unity be brought about by a new feudal order with '"Jewish scapegoats, Slavic pariahs and Negro 'subhumans' . . . at the bottom" and "a militant caste of Samurai and Teutonic Knights ... at the top for all to obey?" Or (a doctrinaire never offers more than two choices) shall "America and the British democracies adopt a common currency and a common citizenship; create a common army, navy and air force under common command; and establish a provisional federal government with limited but adequate powers to provide for the common defense and the general welfare?"

Schuman would not stop with Union Now of Britain and the U.S. He would also bring Russia and others into the Union. For if the democracies cannot unite the world, he warns, the Nazis can and will--and their union will not include the parliament of man and the federation of the world. "The ambitious Caesars of the totalitarian states, almost alone among contemporary rulers, have faced the problem of unifying the world and have acted to achieve a solution." Ugly as it is, Schuman thinks "the Pax Germanica beckons the majority of men," since it offers a solution more tolerable than the anarchy of Europe's last two decades.

Author Schuman then proposes recklessly to jettison "political independence" and national "sovereignty" as quickly as possible. It is here that readers, who may on the whole agree with him, but refuse to be hustled on issues so vital, will say: "Whoa, boy!" He also wants "to crush at once by an invincible superiority of arms" any "secessionists or rebels" while liquidating troublesome "classes, factions and pressure groups."

Author Schuman is an ex-leftist with a leftish tendency to forget that politics are made for people and not vice versa. He is also one of the best informed of U.S. students of Europe's current history and has been scared in direct ratio with his information. But sometimes Schuman mistakes the chattering of his teeth for revelation.

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