THE NEWEST UTOPIA Union Now. By Clarence K. Streit. (Cape.

los. 6d.) IT is a strange thing that no one between Alexander Hamilton (1787) and Mr. Clarence Streit (1939) should have understood how the relations of States need to be ordered. Mr. Streit realises its strangeness. He marvels undisguisedly at the obtuseness of statesmen. Take the League of Nations ; no doubt it had to exist and to fail in order to show its creators, what Mr. Streit sees so clearly, how wrong they were. Some of them, like General Smuts, are still alive and in office in their own countries. They will have to drop their outworn League idea and help to swing their fellow-citizens into Mr. Streit's new Union.

And they must do it now, for "Union Now" is Mr. Streit's theme, in spite of a rather surprising statement that it is only the principle that matters at present, and that, once that is conceded, "there will remain plenty of time" for the practical application. Yet it is by his ideas on practical application that Mr. Streit's proposals will be judged. He sets them out explicitly in his opening chapter. Satisfied that the federal scheme which in 1788 met the needs of thirteen American colonies with a total population of three million, who had never known a dozen years of independence, is applicable in all particulars in 1939 to populous States in four continents divided no less by language, tradition and aspiration than they are by geography, he postulates an integral union of fifteen democracies—Great Britain and her several Dominions (not India), the United States, France, Belgium and Holland, the Scandinavian States, Switzerland and Finland—in one vast super-State with a Government elected by the direct individual vote of every man and woman over 21 in the population of 300,000,000 which the constituent nations comprise.

For the essential of the plan is that it is an integral union of men as individuals, not a League based on Governments. The Union Government thus constituted (Mr. Streit adopts the American Constitution with little modification) is to consist of two Houses, one based on population (the United States

getting 126 members and New Zealand 2) and one based on States, in which representation is equal (except that the United States is to have 8 seats and Britain and France 4 each, while other States have 2). There is to be "a Union citizenship, a Union defence force, a Union customs-free economy, a Union

money, a Union postal and communications system," together

with such lesser attributes of union as common bankruptcy- laws. In all this existing national Governments have no place.

They are to be subordinated to the Union super-Government, as the State Governments in the United States are to the Federal Government at Washington, and the citizens of the existing States will "inevitably rate higher the citizenship that opens the wider field to them."

To say that Mr. Streit is an enthusiast for his scheme is to put it mildly. A refreshingly pontifical passage in which he expresses his conviction that "there is no hope for peace in the Chamberlain policy," but agrees that Mr. Chamberlain did something valuable at Munich in gaining time in which the right policy (Union Now) could be applied, ends : "It will be a tragedy if the courage Mr. Chamberlain showed in rescuing a drowning world in September should come to be forgotten through his having then finished it off by doing the wrong thing when he sought to revive it. I, who believe I know the way to revive it, must remain grateful to him and to all the others who have kept open the possibility of preserving peace and freedom through Union now."

From start to finish, Mr. Streit's argument seems to me divorced from all reality. At a moment when even the British Commonwealth is moving steadily away from the idea of integral union, and would be disrupted by the mere proposal of a Federal Government, Mr. Streit visualises a Federal Govern- ment embracing the British Commonwealth, the United States, France, and seven or eight lesser nations ; at a moment when two States, Britain and America, have taken a year or more to negotiate a trade-agreement which still leaves tariff-barriers high between them Mr. Streit would abolish all tariffs between fifteen States at a stroke ; at a moment when the League of Nations is said to have failed because nations would not go a yard towards surrender of sovereignty Mr. Streit's remedy is to call on them to go a mile—all "with one move, the simple act of union," as he blithely puts it.

Mr. Streit sees his realised Union through a golden haze. I say that, not because of his chapter-heading, "How Union Remedies Our Ills," or his general inability to believe in the possibility of any 01 his hopes being disappointed, but rather in the light of the estimate he puts on its practical capa- city—the power, for example of the Union's armed forces to

impose peace on the world. "Why," he asks in one place, "should a colossal nucleus of nearly three hundred million free men need to raise a finger against the few feeble autocracies left? It needs but exist for democracy to flourish and autocracy to fade "; and later on, "Except for police work, the Union's

only need to keep armaments at all would be as a temporary

precaution against the militant absolutist Powers—Japan, Ger- many and Italy. Even a much tighter affiance among the three than seems likely to be made would be no more formid- able to the Union than an alliance of, say, Mexico, Venezuela and Italy could be to the United States." The Union, it must be remembered, consists for military purposes of little more than the British Empire, the United States and France. But from Mr. Streit's assumption that France has 5,00o aeroplanes and Germany 2,7130 (see his table on p. 144) unexpected

military consequences may no doubt follow.

Having studied Mr. Streit's book with unusual care, for I know and respect him as a very competent journalist, I find it impossible to regard his proposals as anything but sheer

extravaganza. He, as an American, knows better than I do what likelihood there is of the United States merging its If

in a Union membership of which would involve it in war the event of some attack on Finland : if that miracle happene the other miracles necessary might become credible. M Streit has appealed to President Roosevelt to lead his mol. e ment. Pending a response, 'Union Now" can inspire fl more than an academic interest. Integral union between tv or three adjacent States is on the face of it reasonable enoug7, but there are no signs of that anywhere in the world. T. there are, not much is gained by discussing union between

fifteen.

WIISON HARRIS.