Planners in Peoria

Mrs. Sara Sommer is a handsome, substantial widow who owns a lush farm near Peoria. When she first heard of Clarence Streit's plan for lumping the world's democracies into a "Union Now," she said: "Oh, gee! Is that patriotic?" But once convinced that Goodman Streit was not advocating treason, she pitched in, contributing both money and quiet organizing work.

Last Week Mrs. Sommer made the "Welcome to Peoria" speech and underwrote (at something over $2,500) the third annual convention of Clarence Streit's Federal Union, Inc. Four years ago, the "Union Now" idea had seemed dreamy and outrageously advanced. Last week in Illinois, traditional hotbed of U.S. isolationism, the idea still seemed dreamy, but now it was almost behind the times. Mrs Sommer Lad come a long way in postwar thinking--but so had the rest of the U.S.

Lofty Heads. New York Timesman Clarence Kirshman Streit, after a decade in Geneva observing the rise & fall of the League of Nations, published his Union Now in 1939. His basic proposal: that the "Atlantic democracies" (the U.S., Britain, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium', the Scandinavian countries) form a "nuclear union" with common citizenship, currency, interstate trade, communications. Throughout the U.S., earnest, forward-looking citizens formed local committees to push the idea. Three years ago, in noisy convention at Cleveland, the local groups were consolidated as Federal Union, Inc.

With plenty of big-name patrons, the organization has operated genteelly on a "normal" budget of about $1,000 a month. Of its claimed 10,000 members, only 4,500 are dues payers ($2 a year). Federal Union, Inc., as Board Chairman A. J. G. Priest once said, has "tried to save the world on a shoestring."

Warm Hearts. For two days, in a do-gooder atmosphere of maiden ladies, ministers, matrons, high-school students and professors, the Peoria convention drowsed and listened to worthy speeches by Representative Will Rogers Jr., ex-Ambassador William Bullitt, Federal Union's President Streit. Peoria's Hotel Pere Marquette was suitably draped in red-white-&-blue bunting. The LaSalle Room's crystal chandeliers were strung with bouquets of United Nations flags. There were stiff little luncheons with entertainment by Peoria's best singing talent. Seven girls in long square-necked dinner gowns, sang a "Hymn of Peace." Prizes were awarded for an organizational song, a slogan (winner: "Union Now--a Last Peace Tomorrow"), a symbol (winner: a whiffletree).*

The convention floundered ahead, fumbled for a statement of policy. The delegates quibbled and quarreled about allowing China to enter their Federal Union (perhaps the Chinese still need "practice in democratic procedures"). They endorsed the Fulbright Resolution, and (almost as an afterthought) the Moscow agreement.

Solid Feet. By the start of the last session, a barrel-bellied bystander named Lawrence Henry Schultz, owner of a Buffalo, N.Y. bus company, had stood just about all the aimless dreaming he could stand. Taking the floor, he made a speech which electrified his hearers and sent new blood rushing through the veins of Federal Union, Inc. Said Mr. Schultz: "What bothers me is time. The way we're going now, we might get somewhere in ten, 15 years. But we have to do something at the end of this war, not the next one. . . . If we can't get a million members, we'd better fold up and quit. . . . We have to get some money ... set this thing up on a businesslike basis, get an executive and pay him $10,000 or $20,000 a year. . . ."

Mr. Schultz talked on. The convention came to life and wound up in a frenzy of plans for membership and promotional drives. Beamed Founder Streit: "This is what we've needed all the time. Now watch us go." Newly elected Director Schultz retired to his hotel room for a drink.

*Or whippletree: the pivoted (or swinging) bar to which the traces of a harness are fastened.

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