SIR, Without asking Mr. Curry for a " detailed plan
for the reconstitution of the world," I should have liked to see, in so vehement an advocate of Federal Union, the capacity to explain the commonplaces of international living.
Mr. Curry says that " the area of effective government must be increased." This postulates the present existence of effective government ; but he does not tell us where it is to be found. Does he mean the Government of Great Britain, with its permanent core of a million and a half unemployed workers?
. America, with ten million?
Mr. Curry " cannot tell us what is going to happen to oil, wool, cotton and copper under Federal Union " because he has " only the vaguest notions of what is to happen to such commodities" But these, surely, are the commonplaces of ordinary life, the ebb and flow of government. One must, before advocating a new system of government, know what is to become of them ; what general plan of distribution will be adopted for them, for in their distribution lies the seed of war. Will the nations with neither these goods nor money for their purchase be forcibly coerced by nations in whom the major part of the medium of exchange is vested? This problem lies at the root of Federal Union as it lies at the root of the present war of rival economic systems. If money is still to be, as it is now, the medium of exchange, is it to be based upon •production or upon stores of gold? Federal Union, as it is advanced by well meaning but rather unprac- tical advocates, seems to be a plan for consolidating power and wealth in the hands of those people who now hold and abuse it.—Yours faithfully,
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