In a Drawing Room

Cord Meyer Jr., 27, is a pale young man with a preoccupied smile and wavy brown hair. His paleness and his preoccupation are the marks of war: he was very nearly killed on Guam. He lost an eye and had his face shattered when a Jap grenade exploded in his foxhole.* Since his discharge from the Marines, Cord Meyer has been a young man on a crusade. He is the president of United World Federalists, which seeks to save the world through a limited federation before an atomic war destroys it.

He has been talking night & day, at colleges, over the radio, to public audiences, to anyone and everyone who will listen. He has written a book (Peace or Anarchy) which, while not exactly a bestseller, has gone into five printings of 13,000 copies.

Last week he spoke in the graceful drawing room of Manhattan's English Speaking Union.

The middle-aged audience listened to him attentively, then engaged him in spirited debate. Cord Meyer is quick on his feet, sure of his position, talks fast, and is convinced that there is no time to lose.

The Plan. Cord Meyer is the son of a wealthy New York real estate man and onetime diplomat. Before World War II, he was a top honor student at Yale and editor of the Yale Lit. After he was wounded and sent home from the Pacific, he married Mary Pinchot, the comely niece of Pennsylvania's late Governor Gifford Pinchot. He had got started on his crusade when he served as "veteran aide" to Delegate Harold Stassen at the San Francisco Conference. There he saw the United Nations born. He deplored the veto, which left U.N. virtually powerless to prevent aggression.

The Hope. He sees no hope in U.N. as it is now, calling it "a weak league of sovereign, armed states preparing for war." As his ideas took shape, he framed a program. He wants: 1) an agreement among all nations to surrender their arms to U.N., retaining only a force big enough to keep internal order; 2) a U.N. police force to defend all nations from aggression; and 3) an Assembly acting as the world's chief legislative body, with a Security Council acting as a Cabinet.

He is not proposing a One-World government and world constitution; that would take too much time -- more time, he thinks, than the world has. He is young enough to feel that his elders are timid, and mature enough to know that the present uneasy peace cannot last. And he is being heard. He disregards cynics. He thinks of himself as a practical realist and considers optimism foolish but hope necessary. "If this hope is naive," he says, "then it is naive to hope."

* His twin brother was killed on Okinawa.

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