FEDERAL UNION
SIR,—Mr. Wilson Harris's rejection of Federal Union as an immediately practicable aim is based on three contentions: a. That there is in Europe-today no common consciousness which could provide the basis for a constitutional union ; 2. That the technical difficulties in the way of the formation of such a union are almost insuperable ; 3. That the case for Federal Union rests on the unwarranted assumption that national sovereignty is something necessarily bad.
He concludes by advocating a return to the principle of the League of Nations, on the grounds that its failure was due to a series of accidents and not to an inherently faulty structure.
From each of these propositions.. I should like vigorously to dissent.
r. I entirely agree that so close a form of association as federal government can only prove workable if the citizens of the Union desire to work it ; and I agree further that there is in Europe today no passionate conviction of European unity. I agree also that a process of education must take place. But I am convinced that the most rapid method of political education is to be found in the working of political machinery. Men can easily be .ioduced to pay lip service to vague formulas of cosmopolitanism, but such lip service does not educate, it merely drugs. Confront the peoples of Europe with he alternative of order or chaos, force them to take decisions on political issues, give them experience in the practice of inter- national as well as of national government ; such an education in realities rather than in theories will produce the common consciousness that both Mr. Harris and I so fervently, desire. Political institutions are not merely the product of political thought, they are also its creators.
2. I have no desire to belittle the seriousness of the problems which would face the draughtsmen. of a Federal Constitution. Indeed, I should be happy, to add fresh munitions to Mr. Harris's armoury. But if he had sat, as I have sat, through long meetings of experts at which all these and other matters were considered in detail, I am sure that his doubts as to the technical practicability, as opposed to the political possibility of Federation would long ago have been removed. The various problems which he raises have all been discussed by the several research committees of Federal Union. It is impossible without an undue trespass on your space to give their conclusions in detail, and in matters such as these it is the details that count. Acceptance of a principle is relatively easy, agreement on method is a more complicated process. But I can assure Mr. Harris that believers in Federal Union are not content with the reiteration of a magic formula ; they are aware of the problems involved, and are satisfied that solutions can be found if the will to find them exists.
3- This last contention, I must confess, astonishes me. It is surely quite clear that so long as a State retains the final right to be a judge in its own cause, so long will it, in a moment of crisis, prefer the short-term national good to the long-term -common good, Mr. Harris asks whether the un- fettered national- sovereignty of England and France has ever been harmful_ to :mankind. I should have thought that to murmur the words Ottawa, Manchuria, Abyssinia would itself be a sufficient answer. Finally, Mr. Harris produces the old argument that the League might have worked had the men been there to work it. It might, but it did not, and I see no reason to suppose that this unfortunate experience would not be repeated. The League failed because it made national selfishness possible— because it was a method of international collaboration rather than a system of supernational government.—Yours faithfully, PATRICK RANSOME. 2 Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, W.C. 2.
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