UNION NOW "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—In your review of Union Now I think you gravely underestimate the number of individuals who " have under- stood how the relations of States need to be ordered." Such understanding has not been exclusively possessed by Alexander Hamilton and Mr. Streit. You are forgetting Mr. H. G. Wells, Lord Davies and Lord Lothian, among eminent contemporary Englishmen ; Briand, in his rudimentary proposals for. an " United States of Europe," must be taken to have had the federal ideal in mind ; and Tennyson's famous line about the Parliament of Man seems to have a certain relevance. And a good many undistinguished persons like myself are utterly convinced that there is no other means under Heaven by which a settled peace may be established and the continued existence of civilisation assured.
Like Mr. Streit, I " marvel undisguisedly at the obtuseness of statesmen." I marvel almost as much at the bland ridicule with which The Spectator covers Union Now. For what is your alternative hope and goal? What do you look for as the summum bonum in international affairs? A more or less binding agreement to limit world armaments to some beggarly figure like a thousand million pounds a year, while leaving the jungle-anarchy untouched and the bombing aeroplane un- controlled and perpetuating mankind's ludicrous national and racial antagonisms?
I submit that the question at issue is not " Will the principle of world-federation be adopted? " but merely " At what stage will this take place? " In other words, must one or more world-wars be fought before the shattered survivors (if any) learn and apply the very obvious lesson which some of us mastered before 1918? Regrettably, your review of Mr. Streit's book does its little bit towards answering that question in the
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