MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON MR. CLARENCE STREIT, the author of Union Now, has been paying a visit to Europe. He has had many opportunities of renewing relations with former friends and admirers, and has brought with him the new post-war edition of his famous book. To this edition he has added five fresh chapters, bringing the picture of 1939 into line with the picture of 1949. Clearly the similarity between the Hitler and the Stalin situations adds effective urgency to his argument that unless the nations federate immediately they may be swallowed by the large red wolf. But since, as Rudyard Kipling remarked, our hearts are small. Mr. Streit feels that universality is for the moment an impossible ideal, and that what we ought to do is to create an " Atlantic Federal Union of the Free.' Mr. Streit is a sincere man, possessed both of vision and of sense. His long experience of the League of Nations at Geneva has given to his views a practical basis that can only add conviction. He is assuredly no fanciful idealist ; he is a man with first-hand knowledge of international relations who is fully cognisant of the passions, prejudices and emotions that separate man from man. He seems to me preferable to any of the other publicists who have sought, often hysterically, to arouse interest in the federal idea ; he knows the difficulties, and he sometimes faces them squarely ; he does not, as do others, assume that those who criticise his theory, or doubt the practicability of his schemes, are ignorant triflers or evil men thirsting for a third world war. For these reasons I like, admire and trust Mr. Clarence Streit. I wish I could become one of his disciples. 1 have all my life been attracted by new ideas, and find it sad, as the autumn days set in, to discover in myself a certain crustiness of feeling, a certain creakiness of mind.
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It may be said that no man who has witnessed, as I have witnessed, the triumphs of the impossible ought to dismiss any concept as impracticable. In my own lifetime I have seen the miracles of Indian and Zionist independence, the emergence of the United States as a massive belligerent Power, and the Cossacks bivouacking in the alleys of Weimar. Such events would not have been regarded as feasible in 1910. If, therefore, in admitting that Mr. Streit's scheme of Federal Union between Sovereign States is eminently desirable, I find myself mumbling that it is practically impossible, then I should recollect that many other events and combinations of equal impossibility have in fact occurred. There is no doubt that in the United States Mr. Streit has, by the force of his conviction, acquired many powerful adherents and allies. This support is solid as well as sentimental. It may therefore be that I, in hugging my doubts about Atlantic Federation and even about European Union, am proclaiming that I am as back a number as the Methodist Times for October, 1884. Mr. Streit in his book answers cogently many of the questions that I wish to ask. But he does not, at least to my satisfaction, dispose of the two fundamental questions, namely: (1) Does not the idea of Federal Union presuppose a condition of international feeling which, if it existed, would
sender any such union unnecessary? (2) Are not the provisions that differentiate the scheme of Federal Union from a close alliance just those very provisions that would in practice prove intolerable to any present electorate? If all creation were com- posed of lambs longing to herd together in amity, then no herds- men would be required ; and would the workers in Sheffield really
accept legislation passed upon them by some distant Parliament dominated by the workers of Pittsburgh? I may be old- `fashioned ; but I do feel that in our present danger it is not safe to rely upon such " far-off divine events."
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These hesitations are, I know, dismissed as " cynical " by the elect. Yet it is not a sign of complete materialism to realise that what one wants to happen very seldom occurs. I cannot resist the impression that it is not quite fair upon the men and women of the democratic countries to allow them to suppose that there exists some magic formula, some patent medicine, capable of exorcising the Red danger or curing all our human ills. The public in the United States, even the public in these islands, are apt to substitute for serious thought the pleasures of the day-dream and the narcotics of the magic phrase. Such incantations as " collective security " were before the last war repeated without any precise realisation of their meanings or implications. Is there not a danger that Mr. Streit's Union Now may produce a similar dervish ecstasy? Already the phrase " national sovereignty " is uttered with a disdainful curl of the lip as if it implied something archaic, imperialistic and malevo- lent. Yet it means exactly the same as " national independence " —a condition that is widely regarded as estimable and to be desired. In my young days the phrase " the defence of British rights and interests " had a trumpet effect ; today if one were to insert the word " vested " before the word " interests " a really deplorable impression would be created. Yet I fail to under- stand why an interest should be noble and a vested interest ignoble: to me the two expressions arc identical.
The time may come when we have all been so gleichgeschaltet by American culture that we shall respond automatically to the same stimulus. But at the present moment, as is noticeable, we do not respond to the same stimulus. It is evident that in any Federal Union, whatever institutional devices might be adopted, the voice of America would be dominant. It will take many generations before the British citizen responds with com- plete automatism to the voice of America. At the present moment the average British citizen is rendered anxious by the thought that his life and property may be placed in danger by one of those emotional gusts that eddy round the Capitol at Washington ; we are not in the very least comforted by the thought that our policies may be deflected by some twist in American politics or by the influence of some Senator who is unknown to us and whom we are wholly unable to remove. Much as we welcome the massive physical strength of the United States, glad though we must remain that the Americans are by nature so generous, we cannot rid ourselves of the impression that they have not yet acquired a sense of responsibility equal to their sense of power. Their egalitarianism teaches them that one man's judgement is as good as another's ; this illusion brings with it a contempt for expert knowledge ; and it may result that decisions are taken amateurishly and in order to give momentary satisfaction to the common man. We in this country have no desire at all to be at the mercy of American impulses. We prefer therefore to retain our national sovereignty. Is that preference really so disgraceful?
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I cannot but feel that these schemes of world-government arc an escape from reality the danger is so imminent that we have no time to snuff the cocaine of illusion. It would be delightful if we could avoid rearming, not have military service, and live in a world composed of handsome men and women. as benevo- lent, as gentle and as intelligent as Clarence Streit. We live in no such world. We live in a world threatened with war ; the only way to prevent that war is to convince any aggressor that he is bound to lose it ; to do that we must be very united and extremely strong. It is dangerous to evade the necessity of re- armament. or our irksome and perhaps humiliating dependence upon the United States, by inventing cloud worlds where gods and goddesses bask in the sunshine of blissful indolence, and where no thunderbolts can fall. For one Union Now is some such cloud world. The impossible, as I said, sometimes happens : but it takes many years : and we, poor generation, have only got a handful of months.
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