FEDERAL UNION
Stu,—May I try to make peace between Mr. Harold Nicolson and Mr. Curry? They are both nearly right. Mr. Curry is right to advocate the general idea of federation without bothering too much about details ; but he did reproduce Mr. Streit's very jejune copy of the Constitution of the United States. Mr. Nicolson is right in arguing that Federal Union ought not to be content with vague phrases, but ought to consider the problems of copper and the rest. He is wrong in assuming that Federal Union cares nothing for copper. Every question which he mentions, and hundreds of others, have been considered by the research committees of the organisation in my presence, and a telephone message to Gordon Square would have secured information that Federal Union neither began where Mr. Streit began nor left off where Mr. Curry left off. It is, however, impossible to produce a treatise on colVer and a thousand other questions in three months. The difficulties have been put forward and some tentative conclusions reached. If Mr. Nicolson will wait for a week or two I will send him a copy of a very rough draft Constitution which is my personal reaction to the discussions. if he will wait a few weeks longer he can read the explanation of that draft in a book to be published by the Cambridge University Press. He will then be in a position to criticise at least my• personal reaction to what ederal Union has been doing ; and I hope that he will, ecause we do not believe that these problems can be solved by a few dozen experts sitting in conclave. The very tentative proposals which Mr. Nicolson has not seen are being put forward in the hope that they will be received by a barrage of criticism, and then the research which has been started can go forward with a better appreciation of the difficulties in people's minds not only in this country but elsewhere in Europe and in the Dominions.—Yours faithfully,
33 Clarence Road, St. Albans. W. IvoR JEtonms.
Previous page
