CHAPTER 2

The NATO Nations as Founders of the Union


With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. -- Abraham
Lincoln.

If I were revising or re-writing Union Now, what changes would I make?
None in its poem (to follow the chronological order in which its three
parts were originally written[1]), none in its philosophy, and some in
its proposal -- even though none even there that I consider to be major
changes. I say this at the risk of being considered rigid, and
criticized as suffering an acute case of author's pride. Two principles,
however, have long guided me, and proved their worth so well that I
shall stick to them. One I got from Descartes in my teens and have
confirmed from experience, namely, that it is wise never to cease
subjecting even one's firmest convictions, conclusions or working
hypotheses to reconsideration in the light of greater knowledge, events,
failures, shortfalls, and criticism by oneself and others.

To know or feel in my heart that an idea is the offspring of fallacious
reasoning, or of ignorance of certain facts, and yet to cling to it
because I was the first to be seduced by it, or am publicly identified
with it -- this does not appeal to me. I find it more satisfying, and
exciting, to keep on guard against one of our common fallacies, which
Georges de la Fouchardire pointed out in 1918 to this reader of his
column in L'Oeuvre. He wrote that, with ideas as with other property,
once we acquire them -- and no matter how we happen to get them -- we
defend them with our life's blood, and the devil's readiest weapons,
whenever anyone tries to take them from us.

The other guiding principle I got as a boy, when learning to shoot a
rifle, and later had hammered into me as a newspaper reporter, namely,
the importance of trying always to be accurate. To make a virtue of
understatement seems to me as wrong as to practice over-statement
(unless humor is one's purpose). The aim should be to hit the target,
not to shoot over it, or under. We all need to know the facts just as
they are. This requires that they be expressed as accurately as one can
humanly present them, neither swollen nor shrunken so as to make the
speaker or writer appear the better, or to enable him to "play it safe."

WHERE I WOULD ALTER UNION NOW

When I say that I would not change any of what I consider to be the
fundamentals in Union Now, I would like this statement to be understood
as the product of those two guiding thoughts. I would add that although
frequent reconsideration of the fundamentals in Union Now in the light
of events, criticisms, alternative proposals, and further study, has
strengthened my belief in them, this does not mean that if I were
re-writing Union Now today it would be the same throughout -- apart from
obvious differences between 1960 and 1939. There would be a number of
changes, some of which others might consider major. To me they are
secondary, and would tend mainly to bring out more clearly and strongly
the basic principles of the original, put them in better perspective by
more accurate evaluations, and adapt them better to practical
application in the present and looming situations.

In the Postwar edition I dealt with nine of these changes in new Chapter
3, "Were I Re-Writing Union Now." I would refer those interested to it
-- particularly to understand why I now attach even greater value to
individual freedom as the key to peace and to production, and would
emphasize even more the importance of power to freedom and peace, and
why I now think that free federal principles are likely to spread
gradually around the world in a different way than I originally
suggested.

Even more now than in 1949, I believe that the immense impulse toward
free federation, resulting from the creation of the Atlantic Union, will
lead not merely to our Union's expansion through the admission of new
member nations, but also to the creation of regional free federations by
other nations -- for example, in Southern Asia, among the Arab nations,
in Africa and in Latin America, I believe, too, that it will encourage
the long suffering Chinese and Russian peoples eventually to transform
those dictatorships into free unions themselves. As all these processes
gradually develop, as present difficulties are lessened and better means
of overcoming them acquired, and as men profit from the incalculable and
increasing moral and material power that these Unions of the Free would
produce, one could reasonably expect the latter to federate with each
other. Or they could be transforming meanwhile the United Nations -- to
which they would all belong -- gradually into a federation.

All this is, as the Germans would say, music of the future. But consider
how man's scientific and technical development has continued to confirm
through both decades since 1939 what Union Now noted then on page 49:

If we compare each decade of the past thirty years with the decade
before it, we shall have some clue to the accumulating speed with which
the machine will be making our world one during the next decade -- if
our failure to provide the machine with a governor does not meanwhile
wreck it and us.

If we have the creative imagination needed to keep this factor in mind,
we may find that Tennyson's "Parliament of Man," which now seems as far
distant as going to the Moon seemed in 1950, may not be in fact so far
ahead.

THE FOUNDERS OF THE ATLANTIC UNION

The main change I would make in Union Now relates to the founders, and
results from the establishment of NATO since the Postwar edition
appeared. This brings us to one of these necessities that keep recurring
in human affairs -- the necessity of marrying the ideal and the
practical if anything living is to be created in good time -- and the
promising progress toward free government in the past to last, and the
offspring to flourish. And so I would first emphasize now, even more
than in 1939, the principles underlying nuclear union of the free. I
would continue to stress the importance of proposing a concrete list of
founders. But I would make clearer that it is no hard and fast list, and
that adjustments can, and should, be made according to conditions
obtaining at the time of action.

The essentials continue to me to be that (a) the nucleus of the Union
should be composed of relatively few nations, (b) these should be strong
enough in both material and moral power and ties, to assure the Union
from the start enough power for it to have a reasonable hope of winning,
without war, against dictatorship, depression and disintegration, and
(c) the ratio of experienced to inexperienced democratic peoples or
"problem" nations among the founders should be great enough to give a
stronger guaranty of individual freedom than any practical alternative
can.

From the standpoint of experience in free government -- to which I
continue to attach decisive importance -- the fifteen founders I
suggested in Union Now remain in my opinion the ideal list. I have long
believed that one should aim clearly at what one finds to be ideal, and
that this aim in itself rules out the possibility of achieving the ideal
at the outset. One cannot seek an objective and at the same time have it
in hand. To move toward the ideal, and to achieve it completely in the
end,[2] one must start with less than the ideal, because of the
practical considerations that always necessarily affect any attempt to
translate thought into action, and turn ideals into realities.

The practical question we must always face in the present enterprise is:
Just which of the ideal list of peoples experienced in free government
offers the most reasonable hope of forming, with just which other
peoples, a sound nuclear Union of the Free at any given time? The answer
is bound to vary with conditions prevailing at the time one must answer
it.

It was one thing when Hitlerian Germany, militarist Japan and Fascist
Italy formed the most imminent danger facing all of the fifteen I
nominated as founders in 1939. When Communist Russia made its pact with
Nazi Germany and enabled Hitler to conquer all the experienced
democracies on the Continent, except Switzerland and Sweden, which
dictatorship surrounded, one had to start with the seven
English-speaking democracies that remained, if one were to start at all.
In these circumstances I proposed in 1940-41 in Union Now with Britain
that these seven form a provisional union to meet this emergency. I
stressed that this smaller nucleus was meant to grow into the larger
Union with the liberation of the other democracies, but the book's title
has led many to assume that Union Now aims at an exclusively
English-speaking Union -- a project which that book rejected.

THE NATO FIFTEEN AND Union Now's FIFTEEN

With the liberation and victory I returned to the broader original
proposal. After the North Atlantic alliance was formed by the United
States, Canada, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and
Luxemburg, I urged that these seven form the nucleus for an Atlantic
Union, too. I supported the Atlantic Union resolutions that were
introduced in Congress in the sessions of 1949, 1951 and 1955; they
solved the problem of the nucleus by inviting the seven sponsors of the
Atlantic alliance to send delegates to a convention which would be
authorized to explore how they might best form a union, and to invite
"such other democracies" as they thought wise to join them in the work
of the convention.

Meanwhile, NATO grew larger, and a variety of other factors made it
increasingly difficult to restrict the Convention nucleus to the seven
sponsors, and increasingly practical to begin with all the fifteen NATO
nations. Although the number -- fifteen -- is the same as Union Now
proposed in 1939, the composition is quite different. Of the original
Union Now fifteen, the fifteen NATO nations include only eight -- the
United States, Canada, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Denmark and Norway. My other seven -- Australia, Eire, Finland, New
Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and the Union of South Africa -- are
replaced in the NATO fifteen by Iceland, Luxemburg, the German Federal
Republic, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Turkey. Clearly the last five are
much less experienced in free government than are the missing seven of
the Union Now list -- with the exception of the Union of South Africa,
where a most undemocratic racism has ruled in recent years.

Facing this choice between the "more ideal" and the "more practical," my
weighing of the various factors involved leads me to conclude that we
should aim now at an Atlantic Union composed of the NATO fifteen. The
Atlantic Convention allows this possibility to be explored without
further delay. I believe it can work out a plan to federate these
fifteen to what I consider a minimum but decisive degree.

If this does not prove possible, one must re-examine the problem --
perhaps even in the Convention -- in the light of the situation then
obtaining. Events may make it practical to try to federate a more ideal
group more fully. Or they may make it imperative to try to start on a
less ideal basis. All that we can be sure of now is that by making the
most of the opportunity which the Convention offers, we shall learn more
than we could learn otherwise, and be more likely to succeed thereafter.

Having stated this conclusion, I would now give some of the reasoning
that has gone into it. To me the important question is this: Is the NATO
group sufficiently loaded on the side of democratic experience, and
community of background and interest, to make it reasonably possible to
federate these nations on a sound free basis? I find the answer is
clearly, Yes. The question is one of ratio. So long as the percentage of
inexperience and other weakening factors is considerably less than half,
or as small as in the present instance, I think it is safe. Perhaps a
comparison -- however odious comparisons may be -- will clarify the
point.

ATLANTIC UNION AND EUROPEAN UNION:
EXPERIENCE VS. INEXPERIENCE

Much as I applaud the Six Nations of Europe for the Common Market they
have achieved, I find that in these Six the ratio of inexperience to
experience in free government is dangerously high for sound political
union, The three members that have the longest record in stable free
government -- those of Benelux -- form only 11 per cent of the total
population. In a free federal Union, population is, in final analysis,
the long term dominating factor. The twenty million people of Benelux
cannot possibly suffice to keep on the side of liberty a union with a
total population of 170 millions.

Free government in France has had so checkered a career as to make some
doubtful of it, but personally I would readily include France with
Benelux, as an experienced democracy. The many and magnificent
contributions to freedom the French have made since the 18th century,
leave no uncertainty in my mind about them. But when we add the French
to Benelux, the combined population of those experienced in freedom
remains a minority in the Six Nations. The Germans and Italians would
form the majority, with 105 million of its 170 million population.
Though they have made very promising progress toward free government in
the past century, and particularly since World War II, who can forget
how the Italian democracy gave way to Fascist dictatorship in the early
1920s -- or how the German democracy succumbed to a far more sinister
dictatorship in 1933?

An individual needs to learn to know his weaknesses and be on guard
against them in his own interest; so it is with nations, too. The great
majority of Germans and Italians want their present experiment in
democracy to succeed. They have suffered much more than the rest of us
from dictatorship. And so they have even more reason than I to doubt
that a political union of the Six Nations would provide sufficient
brakes against a recurrence of dictatorship when it faced such crises as
depression or war. Certainly it is not surprising that many people in
Benelux and France are reluctant to convert their economic union into a
political one. They realize that such a Union, even with federation's
checks against majority rule, would expose their heroically won
liberties to a government where the majority would be composed of
peoples whose efforts to govern themselves in freedom have not yet
withstood the strain of any major emergency. This illustration will
serve to show why I am chary of any Union where the factor of experience
in free government is not very strong from the outset.

But whereas inexperience would dominate from the start in a European Six
Nation Union, it would be in a minority in an Atlantic Union. Add
Portugal, Greece and Turkey to West Germany and Italy, and still this
group would form less than one-third of the population of an Atlantic
Union composed of the fifteen NATO nations, which would total 471,000,00
-- with 322,000,000 of them long experienced in free government.

In such an Atlantic Union the United States, Britain and Canada would
form more than half (249,000,000) of its total population. The majority
of its people from the start would thus contribute to its success the
world's longest experience in maintaining stable free government, and a
two-party system, on a vast scale of population and area. From the
start, too, it would have another advantage -- more than 40 per cent of
its population could contribute the long experience in maintaining vast,
free federal unions that the United States and Canada have. All this
would help assure that the constitution of such a Union would be soundly
built -- and that its statesmen could meet the dangers and difficulties
of its early, formative years more successfully than a Union of the Six
Nations could.

Add to this solid center the experience and varied contributions to free
government that Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Luxemburg and Norway
offer, and this core expands into a two-thirds majority of the Union, in
number of nations as well as in population -- in both its Senate and
House. This would also be the proportion of people and peoples in it who
would contribute another important asset to success -- the fact that
they had never fought each other for nearly a century and a half. This
contrasts sharply with the emotional volcano that may still be
smouldering under the European Six, 65,000,000 of whom were fighting the
other 105,000,000 less than twenty years ago -- with the majority
advantage un the side of the two peoples whose governments attacked, and
lost.

This may suffice to show why such an Atlantic Union would inspire more
confidence all around -- and confidence is a most important
consideration. The factors that cause distrust and fear would
insidiously contribute to unsoundness in the drafting of a federal
constitution for the European Six, and to friction and weakness in its
functioning. The reasons for confidence and faith that come, when this
group is broadened into an Atlantic Union, would also work in many ways
to assure it the firm constitutional foundation, and the cooperative,
give-and-take spirit, that such a venture needs to survive its early
years.

(It should also be noted that the factor of experience would be
increased by the first nations that were admitted to the Atlantic Union,
once it was established. I would hope that these would include
Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Austria, Eire, Sweden,
Switzerland, and some of the stabler Latin American Republics. Their
admission, and that of others, would, of course, also strengthen the
Union in other ways.)

With such a strong nucleus, and in such a favorable climate, the problem
which Germany, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Turkey present should not be
dangerously difficult. In fact, one could reasonably hope that an
Atlantic federal union with them would suffice to remove all real danger
from the problem, and lessen its intrinsic difficulties considerably.
Its solution thus would add considerable elements of strength and
stability to the union. In all these five peoples, except Portugal, free
government has made very promising progress in recent years against
great odds. Membership in an Atlantic Union would lessen these odds. It
would not only remove negative factors but provide the positive
conditions and incentive needed to speed the solid growth of free
government in these nations, and assure its success.

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AGE OF DISCOVERY, ATHENS AND ATATURK --
REVIVED AND HARNESSED TO FREEDOM BY ATLANTIC UNION

And what great possibilities they offer! Think of hitching securely to
the star of freedom-and-union, or adding to it: ... the astonishing
energies of the Germans -- everlastingly resurgent, from the days of
Julius Caesar down to the swift recovery we ourselves witnessed after
both World Wars.... the mixture of poetry, philosophy and power that
produced such giants as Beethoven, Braun, Bunsen, Charlemagne,
Clausewitz, Daimler, Diesel, Duerer, Einstein, Goethe, Helmholtz, Heine,
the I. G. Farben, Kant, Koch, Luther, Mommsen, Mozart, Ranke, Schiller,
Schubert ...

... And adding the rare qualities which the people of Italy have shown
in so many fields (for so many centuries since the rise of Rome,
resurgent in the glories of medieval Florence, Venice, Genoa, and then
of the Risorgimento), and in the geniuses they gave mankind, -- Bruno,
Caesar, Cavour, Cicero, Columbus, Dante, la Duse, Fabius, Ferrero,
Galileo, Garibaldi, and the Grachii, Horace, Leonardo, Machiavelli
Marconi, Marcus Aurelius, Petrarch, Pliny the Elder and Younger,
Raphael, St. Francis d'Assisi, Savonarola, Titian, Virgil, Volta ...

... And adding the fabulous creative abilities of the people of Greece
-- long dormant but still fertile -- who gave us heroes of the stature
of Aeschylus, Alexander, Archimedes, Aristides, Aristophanes, Aristotle,
Demosthenes, Euclid, Euripides, Herodotus, Hippocrates, Homer, Leonidas,
Miltiades, Pericles, Phidias, Pindar, Plato, Praxiteles, Pythagoras,
Sappho, Socrates, Sophocles, Thucydides, Xenophon ...

... And adding the less known (to the West) but obvious abilities that
enabled the Turks to create an empire which stretched from Persia to
Morocco, from Mecca to Vienna, and to maintain it -- despite all its
conflicting religions and medley of peoples, and without benefit of
railway, steamship or telegraph -- much longer[3] than the empires of
Britain and France have survived, and to hold for centuries the name of
the "Grand Turk," and give such proofs of it as Mohammed the Conqueror
and Suleiman the Magnificcnt, Sinan the architect and Sudi the scholar,
and, in our day, Ataturk, Ismet Inonu, Halid Edib and Ahmed Emin Yalman
...

... And adding, too, the venturing spirit that has slept so long among
the Portuguese since the years when Vasco da Gama sailed first to India,
and Magellan's expedition sailed round the planet -- but that Atlantic
Union could well awaken ...

One needs but thus skim the surface to see how great a rebirth is
possible in these five peoples alone when Union of the Free rekindles
those who led the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Discovery;
those whose Athens first sowed the seed of the West, and whose Ataturk,
linking Europe and Asia, led in the westernizing movement that has now
swept through all Islam, and in the emancipation of women that has
advanced so far in Asia and Africa. Here are potentialities to fire the
imagination -- mighty intangibles that freedom-and-union would harness
together, and would also unite with all that the Americans, British,
French, Belgians, Canadians, Dutch and Scandinavians have to contribute.
These things of the spirit, when touched by the magical power that union
adds, will -- if we are right in our faith that puts man and his soul
above matter -- soon replace the losses in relative material power that
Atlantica has suffered since 1939.

OUR FINEST KNOWHOW, WHICH WE FAIL TO TEACH

To harness securely to freedom the five peoples of NATO who are least
experienced in maintaining democratic government would in itself be
justification enough for Atlantic Union, if only because it would turn
us to the task we have too long overlooked -- that of learning by
experience how to teach better to others the best knowhow we have to
teach, namely democratic government. This is the hardest technique to
teach because it is the hardest for men to learn. Soviet Russia and
China can teach the knowhows in technology and science in which we have
put our pride and concentrated our Point Four programs, to our
increasing danger. We have already so perfected these techniques that it
is infinitely easier to teach people how to operate and make the most
complicated (and destructive) machines than to govern themselves
freedom. That the latter should be -- at best -- so much harder to teach
and to learn may seem a paradox. Yet it is self-evident that man (whom
we so often call "little") is a far more powerful and unpredictable atom
than the atoms that make our bombs or intercontinental missiles and
sputniks, since it is self-evident that it is man who created all these
wonders, and weapons.

Man can accurately foretell what atoms will do under given conditions,
but no atom and no man can predict what this or that human individual
will do, can do -- how feeble or how great he will prove at the test, of
what base clay he is really made, or of what divine spirit. And so it is
a far harder and worthier achievement for man to govern himself than for
him to govern matter, dictate to atoms, or even to other men. It is also
a much more rewarding achievement.

The acme of this achievement is not for Robinson Crusoe to govern
himself on a lonely island, but for millions of Robinson Crusoes to
govern themselves together in freedom.

Each civil liberty democracy has gained its strength by proving capable
of doing what the people of Soviet Russia have not yet begun to do. All
these democracies are living proof that their citizens can govern
themselves on a basis of individual freedom and equality -- that it is
possible for men to achieve this marvel: Establish and maintain a system
whereby each of these unpredictable individuals of incalculable
potential power for both evil and good is helping govern all the others,
while being governed equally at the same time by each and all of
them.[4]

In comparison to this marvel, how petty and pitiful is the spectacle of
one man governing other men by terror and force, even though the
dictator keeps hundreds of millions of his fellow-men in enslavement,
much as a scientist keeps in subjection a myriad of atoms ... bloodless,
mindless, heartless, soul-less atoms.

Too long our aim has been centered on releasing the energy that lies in
atoms. Too long have we neglected the field where our greatest genius
lies, that of releasing the far greater energy that comes from freeing
men from the prejudice, and ignorance, and fear, and lack of faith in
themselves and their fellows, that has kept so much of humanity, through
so much of its history, from gaining for themselves and all mankind,
living and unborn, the unbelievable rewards that have always followed
the Union of Free Men.

The danger to freedom in our success in teaching underdeveloped peoples
to industrialize and arm themselves, while failing to teach them
democratic government, should be evident enough in Japan's swift rise to
Pearl Harbor, and Russia's to Sputnik. The first necessity is to make
clear to the new nations why freedom is the key to peace; why the
institutions of individual liberty give the strongest human guarantees
against war -- and particularly against the surprise attack which atomic
weapons make everyone fear -- whereas the institutions of dictatorship
are loaded for war and treacherous attack; and why individual liberty is
also the key to the productive power the new nations seek. All this is
not so hard to prove,[5] but the 1960 United Nations Assembly makes it
only too evident that our official spokesmen have failed to persuade the
new nations that the peace and prosperity they desire should lead them,
because of the nature of the institutions involved, to help strengthen
those of civil liberty in the great powers, not those of dictatorship.

FREEDOM IS IN A DANGEROUS MINORITY

Freedom requires a political ability that the human race all too
evidently is slow to acquire. It is so hard for people to govern
themselves with equal individual liberty that I find only about
one-eighth of mankind has succeeded in doing this as independent
nations, even fairly well, for so short a period as fifty years.
Ominously, while the world's population has been "exploding" in numbers,
this small, fairly "free" fraction has grown even smaller in the past
decade, since 1950 it has shrunk from one-seventh of humanity to
one-eighth. Half of that eighth is supplied by the United States -- and
its shortcomings, particularly on the racial side, are obvious. The
other half, no less imperfect, is weakly divided into a dozen sovereign
nations: The United Kingdom, Prance, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg,
the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand. Some of these have been practicing freedom for many
generations; others, you may say, hardly meet my low fifty-year test. If
you find other nations that you think meet them all, you can add them to
your list; the fraction will remain small. We have already noted that by
no means all the members of NATO meet this test. And even the NATO
fifteen put together have a population of only 471,000,000 -- or
one-sixth of the 2,850,000,000 persons now[6] on earth.

At best, one must agree that, for the great bulk of humanity, individual
liberty is very young indeed, is in a very vulnerable minority in a huge
mass long habituated to despotism. One must agree, too, that modern
techniques in mass deception, mass subjugation and mass destruction
fearfully increase the danger to the one-eighth of mankind who have
governed themselves with a fair degree of equal individual freedom for
the past fifty years. If you agree that freedom makes for peace and
production, then you must conclude that the present danger to the tiny
free minority is a danger to all mankind, too.

So hard it is for men to practice the free way of life that individual
liberty, to rise at all and to survive long enough for men to become
conditioned to it from childhood, hitherto required the protection of
inanimate Nature. So ill-adapted is it to making war, and so vulnerable
to attack do its philosophy and institutions make it, that freedom, to
grow up at all, needed such defenses as the mountains of Switzerland,
the lowlands of Holland, the English Channel and the oceans of America.

With the development of the jet plane, the guided missile, the atomic
bomb, nothing in Nature remains now to protect liberty anywhere --
nothing but the best in human nature, the wisdom, courage, kindness and
spirit that give freedom the power that lies in Union of the Free.

The protection that Nature no longer gives, the peoples most experienced
in freedom must themselves provide, both to defend their own liberty and
to shield nascent liberty in other countries long enough for it to take
root.

THE IMPORTANCE OF POWER TO FREEDOM AND PEACE

If we agree that the freest nation is the least aggressive and the most
productive, the problem of peace, both on its political and economic
sides, boils down to the question: How to put more and more of the
world's power under freedom? How to put enough moral and material power
behind it soon enough to eliminate present dangers, and long enough to
enable the host of young nations to develop themselves educationally,
industrially, and politically, and to permit freedom to spread and grow
all over the world?

To abolish the United Nations veto or try to change the United Nations
into a world government now is clearly no answer to this problem. Such
policies merely shift to the seven-eighths of mankind, who are
inexperienced in freedom, more voice in the control of the power that
the free eighth now divide.

Nor can the problem be answered by the free militarizing themselves as
they are now doing, giving the government more and more power over the
citizen, resorting in peacetime to propaganda, spying and secrecy --
going, in short, the way of dictatorship.

In the game with dictatorship that we must win, freedom obliges the free
to play with cards face up against an opponent whose cards are face
down. To govern ourselves freely we must know what our government is
doing. But there is no way whereby we can keep an eye on it without
everyone on earth -- and the Kremlin first of all -- knowing everything
we learn. We can know what the Canadians, British, French and other
democratic governments are doing because their people have institutions
like ours for keeping tabs on their governments. But none of us can know
what is happening under the Communist dictatorship any more than can its
slaves.

And so the free must win in a game for keeps, where the cards of Uncle
Sam, John Bull, Marianne de France are face up on the table, with the
searchlight of the press and opposition parties playing not only on the
cards but up the sleeves of the players and under their part of the
table to make sure that nothing phony is going on -- and trying ...
vainly ... to reach the other end of the table where the master of the
Kremlin sits with his cards hidden in his hand.

There is only one possible way to win in such a game, and that is to
have so strong a hand that no dictator can challenge it. Clearly freedom
can not hold such a hand while its cards are divided as they are now.

How can the free gain such a hand? There is only one way: By ceasing to
leave freedom's cards divided among fifteen "sovereign" players. By
ceasing to play their aces and trumps against each other. By putting
their cards together in one hand, played by a Federal Union government
representing all the free.

In other terms, the answer is that of Union Now: Federate the freest
fraction of mankind in a Great Union of the Free, and thereafter extend
this federal relationship to other nations as rapidly as this proves
practicable, until the whole world is thus eventually governed by
freedom and union.

No halfway Union, whether in powers or members, will answer the problem
of giving freedom decisive power without sacrificing liberty in the
process.

THE FIVE-ACE UNION

Only by fully federating all the free fraction can the free gain the
decisive power they need, morally, militarily, politically, to save
themselves and world peace. The post- war Union Now pointed out in 1949:

Such is the power that freedom produces through union that this small
minority need only federate for their Union to hold all four aces, and
the joker -- the hand that can be played face up, and win.

The ace of clubs, or armed power: Union would make them far stronger in
land power, give freedom the bulk of the world's air power, 91 per cent
of the world's naval tonnage, 100 per cent atomic power, and strategic
bases all over the globe.

The ace of spades, or productive power: Tangled up though they are with
their tariffs and currencies, the free seventh has long out-produced all
the rest of the world -- and how freedom's production would soar if the
free nations all had one currency and formed one free-trade market as
the forty-eight United States do!

The ace of diamonds, or raw material power ...

The ace of hearts, or moral power: This Union would unite all the
peoples toward whom the rest of humanity has long looked for refuge from
oppression, and leadership toward liberty. Union, by giving it every
ace, would add irresistible power to freedom's appeal.

All four aces, and the joker, too -- the Union's power to grow: The
Union need only admit other nations to it as they proved their freedom
to keep on increasing its overwhelming power.

Never was so great an opportunity offered to a free people as that which
history offers now to the citizens of the United States.

In 1952 General Eisenhower confirmed this in his NATO report: "Visible
and within our grasp we have the possibility of building such military,
economic and moral strength as the Communist world would never dare
challenge." And he added: "Then the Atlantic Community will have proved
worthy of its history and its God-given endowments. We shall have proved
our union the world's most potent influence toward peace."

We put our trust, however, in alliance, not in union. So did he as
President, although in the same report he had said: "Peacetime
coalitions throughout history have been weak and notoriously
inefficient."

The resulting weakness has led us inevitably to begin turning down our
cards, too, little by little. Let us fool ourselves no longer. As the
U-2 spy plane affair showed all the world so luridly, we are copying
dictatorship when we seek strength by spying, secrecy, giving more power
to the Executive, making the people depend blindly on the Government.

True, one must fight fire with fire at times -- but one can burn oneself
badly that way. Must we burn ourselves worse than with the U-2 before we
fight fire with less dangerous means?

With the Soviet space-ship orbiting above every 91 minutes as I write,
some may fear that the proverbial power that lies in union can no longer
give freedom the unchallengeable hand that was in our grasp in 1952. If
so, it is still true that the more strength we gain that way the safer
we shall be. For my part, I believe that we can still thus gain the
unbeatable hand we need ... but we have no time to lose.

THE "BALANCE OF TERROR" IN ARMED POWER

Armed power was about the only important thing in which the combined
strength of the dictatorships, compared to that of the democracies, was
relatively high before World War II, as reflected in the tables in Union
Now. The fact that nations so poor and so weak in so many other respects
should be so heavily and expensively armed by dictatorship, while
democracy kept the richest and strongest peoples from spending
relatively so much on arming, tells its own story. And the tragic story
began six months after Union Now appeared. Today, armed power is still,
significantly, the thing that dictatorship has built up out of all
proportion to its strength in other respects, the thing in which it is
in relatively the best position to challenge the NATO fifteen now. So
much more is kept secret now than then, that it seems useless to try to
pin any comparison of relative strength down to figures. Two great
differences with 1939 need to be noted: a) atomic, missile, air and
submarine power has grown so enormously on both sides that b) there is
now much stronger agreement all round that each is able to destroy the
other, no matter who starts, and that therefore a "balance of terror"
has been reached which serves as a powerful deterrent to war. The point
was well put by Dr. Harold C. Urey, the atomic scientist who won the
Nobel Prize, when he said at the University of Southern California on
August 10, 1960:

At present, estimates have been made that there exist stored within the
various countries of the world explosives equivalent to the order of ten
tons of TNT for every man, woman and child on the surface of the earth.
Never before have men stored such enormous quantities of explosives.
Rockets have been developed capable of delivering hydrogen bombs
one-third of the way around the earth, and there is no certainty that
the end is in sight at all.

What I wish to emphasize is that the magnitude of these changes is so
great that it involves a change in the quality of the modern world. For
the first time in history, no country is large enough to maintain within
its border a relatively secure heartland which can be regarded as free
from attack.

It is often stated that the idea of overwhelming strength on the part of
the democracies of the world as opposed to the Communist bloc is
impossible since both sides have atomic and hydrogen bombs, and this
makes any disparity in military strength impossible. I think this is
true, or that it will be true in a short time.

But it is also stated, and I believe correctly, that neither side can
use these immensely powerful weapons for they will surely destroy both
sides in a major conflict. I rather think that this is understood by the
people of the United States and those who represent us in Washington. I
also think that it is realized by the Soviet Union. It is not so certain
that Communist China appreciates the situation, but it is to be hoped
that she will before long. As a practical matter of pursuing the
policies of these individual groups, it is not possible to use these
great weapons.

All of us, therefore, must fall back on something else. In fact, it
appears that the Soviet Union is actively pursuing a policy of
disruption in any part of the world where it can exert influence --
Cuba, Africa, the Middle East, the Far East -- and attempts are made to
promote disorder and misunderstanding in Europe and between Europe and
the United States. In other words it is pursuing other means of waging
modern conflict than the use of atomic bombs. This means that the West
must strengthen its means of waging its war along similar lines. The
Union of the democratic countries of the West in a Federal Government
would promote great strength along these other lines.

UNION INCREASES OUR ATOMIC POWER IN FOUR WAYS

Before considering the non-military power factors in the problem, let us
note that Atlantic Union would greatly strengthen the position of the
free as regards atomic and other modern weapons. It would do this in at
least four ways.

First, Union - would give Atlantica two tremendous strategic advantages:
1) Its territory and industrial and military centers would be much more
widely dispersed than those of the United States or Soviet Russia, and
2) it would have dependable bases much nearer to Communism's citadel
than the United States has, or than the Kremlin has to the Union's
citadel in North America. True, the United States now has bases in
Western Europe, but whether these can be used at the showdown is very
doubtful. This doubt is inherent in the alliance system. It had been
increased by agreements that give each country, on whose soil these
bases are situated a veto over American use of certain weapons. The
uncertainty is growing greater in Britain as a result of the rise of
unilateral atomic disarmament, anti-American and neutralist sentiment,
particularly in the left wing of the Labor Party. It is growing in
France, as a result of President de Gaulle's "nationalistic" policies.
The uncertainty regarding American bases in Europe inevitably encourages
Communist aggression. Merely by replacing this doubt with certainty,
Atlantic Union would immensely strengthen Freedom's hand while saving at
least $10 billions a year[7] -- and discouraging the Kremlin and Peking
from risking atomic war.

Experience shows that dictators are highly unlikely to attack unless
they believe they have a good chance to win not merely the opening
battle but the war, without suffering more destruction themselves than
the prize is worth. The present "balance of terror" already acts as
powerful deterrent; the more impossible we make it for Moscow to wipe
out our means of devastating retaliation to any attack it launches, the
stronger this deterrent becomes. Those who still fear that the Kremlin
would attack this gigantic, widely dispersed Union, should fear even
more that it will attack the United States, or any European Union.

It is important to note, too, that both strategic advantages which
Atlantic Union brings would increase as it admitted other nations to it
-- and we have already seen that one could hope for the first of these
to include far-flung countries from all around the globe.[8]

Secondly, Atlantic Union would immensely and immediately advance
Atlantic development of all modern weapons. It would do this also in two
ways. First, it would eliminate the shocking waste of money and time,
and of scientific and engineering minds and knowledge that is inevitable
in the present system, or in any alternative short of Atlantic
federation. The latest example of this financial waste is the current
decision of President de Gaulle to spend $2.4 billion more on arming
France atomically. It seems to me idle to single him out for censure
because of this, or to blame him alone for "excessive nationalism," or
as being "obsessed" with the idea of French "grandeur." It was no less
wasteful and nationalistic for Britain to make its own atomic bombs.
The-primary responsibility for all this, however, lies not in London or
Paris, but in Washington. It set the nationalistic example, and by its
policy of not sharing its secrets with its friends it practically forced
these proud powers to take the course they took. If the situation were
reversed, and France were in our position and the United States and
Britain were in that of France, would not we and the British insist as
strongly as President de Gaulle does on having our own atomic bombs, and
an equal voice with France on world policy?

My own view is that President de Gaulle's "excessive nationalism"
results, in last analysis, from his believing, not that this is wiser
for France than an Atlantic Union, but that nationalism and "power
politics" are in control in Washington, and therefore the only realistic
policy for France is to follow suit. I believe that this assumption is
based on a profound misconception of the American people, but I can
understand why this view of the United States is widely held in West
Europe. One of the strong driving forces behind many supporters of
European Union is the belief that, to stand up to Washington, one must
have power, and the only way to get enough power to deal with it as an
equal is to federate Western Europe. Because of this reasoning, European
Union is often urged as an essential first step to Atlantic Union, if
not the only way, to bring the United States in.

During the war, General de Gaulle had no little cause to conclude that,
in last analysis, only power counts with Washington and London.
Commenting on the absence of his government at Yalta -- where Roosevelt
and Churchill went to accommodate a dictator who had gained his power by
atrocious purges - I wrote in the March 1945 Federal Union World:

In 1939 when France was heavily armed it had a full voice in Big Power
meetings. Now it is weak, and snubbed. Though much of the war is being
fought on its soil, decisions of vital interest to it are taken without
consulting it. The lesson is plain to every Frenchman ... if you would
have the position you had before, then arm, arm, arm ... If you cannot
equal the U.S. in power, you can hope to equal Britain. It does not
matter what you do to gain power ... if the end result is to give you
great armed power, then Uncle Sam and John Bull will come knocking
deferentially at your door. That is the lesson Yalta teaches, and to
peace it is poison.

The Yalta poison is still working.

Even worse than the waste of money our atomic policy has caused, is the
waste of time, knowledge, scientists technicians, and prestige. We have
deprived the best scientists and engineers in Western Europe of facts
and techniques we have learned, and have diverted many of them into
trying to learn secrets which the less scrupulous Communists already
know. By Union we would have had them helping push forward the frontiers
of science. We thus contributed heavily to Moscow's gaining the prestige
Sputnik gave it. If we are making the British and French learn the hard
way some of our "secrets," they are making us learn just as wastefully
certain secrets they have each discovered. Atlantic Union would reverse
this idiotic policy. It would pool all of Atlantica's secrets and
scientists. These are by no means limited to the Americans, British and
French; witness the part that Danes, Germans, Italians and others played
in the atomic breakthrough. The gain that would result for all of us
from positively uniting our best scientific and engineering knowledge
and brains is incalculable.

GREATER ATOMIC SECURITY THROUGH UNION

Thirdly, Atlantic Union would assure better security for our secrets
than present United States policy, which was adopted primarily for
reasons of security. Once all the secrets of the Americans, British,
French and other members of an Atlantic Union were transferred to the
Union government, there would no longer be the danger of leaks in this
or that nation there is now. All the people of the Union would have a
voice in determining policy in this field, but their national
governments would no longer have anything to do with it -- no more than
the Tennessee state government now has any control over atomic plants on
its territory, or any knowledge of Washington's secrets. The security
advantages of Atlantic Union were pointed out by Dr. Urey long before
Soviet Russia learned our atomic secrets. He wrote in the July 1947
Freedom & Union:

We would not give the atomic secrets to France, to England, to Holland,
any more than we give our present secrets to the state of Illinois.
There might be citizens of other countries (in the Union) who would know
these secrets, but if so, they would be controlled by law, just as are
the citizens of the state of Illinois at present.

Before the Fuchs case proved him right, Dr. Urey went on to warn: "There
are people in England, France, Denmark, who know a great deal about our
atomic secrets. We have no control over their actions by any legal
methods." The Union plan, he continued, "would replace the situation in
which we have no legal control over people who know atomic bomb secrets,
with one in which some sort of control would be set up, and thus from
the standpoint of military secrets, the situation would be improved."
Whatever leaks might occur through Union, he added, "would not be as
important as the greatly increased military strength of such a federal
union."

Fourthly, Atlantic Union would ease the problem of securing atomic
agreement with the nations outside the Union, particularly Russia. Here
again the Union would be much better off than is the United States
today. It would need merely to admit other nations to it to extend its
Atomic Authority's jurisdiction. As this increased its gigantic power in
every field, the Kremlin's position would be made so weak that it might
well prefer to reach atomic agreement with the Union soon after its
creation, just as it buried the hatchet with Hitler when it felt
relatively weak.

Fifthly, Atlantic Union would reduce the number of atomic powers from
four to two, and end the danger of Germany entering that club.

ATLANTIC NON-MILITARY POWER IN 1939 AND NOW

Meanwhile, the "balance of terror," while requiring the free to keep up
their guard militarily, makes the non-military factors in power all the
more important.

Atlantica clearly does not have the same degree of non-military material
power that Union Now showed in Chapter V[9] it had in 1939. Nor does the
addition of Western Germany, Italy, and the other NATO countries suffice
to compensate for all the material power lost. Even so, I am convinced
that the NATO fifteen, by federating their strength, would still gain
material power, to an overwhelming degree, compared to the combined
strength of Russia and China, and moral power even more.

The addition of Germany and Italy to the Union Now group increases, of
course, the relative world power of Atlantica in the Chapter V
measurements that concern manufacturing, transportation and finance. The
losses are mainly in raw materials, area and population; they result
from the transformation of the Belgian, British, Dutch and French
Empires into more than thirty new sovereign nations. These losses,
however, are more apparent than real, for the simple reason that, if
these peoples are to raise their standards as they wish, the great bulk
of their products must be exchanged in Atlantica for the latter's
manufactured goods and stored capital. This is inevitable for the coming
years, at least (and Atlantic Union would make it inevitable
indefinitely), because only Atlantica has the surplus financial and
manufacturing power they need, and the merchant marine to carry their
goods to market and bring back their purchases.

The low living standards and other domestic needs of Russia and China
will not permit them for a number of years to do more than score
economic propaganda points such as they have made in Cuba. They can make
a showing in a few commodities in a few countries, but if this ever led
all -- or many of -- the new countries to turn, like Castro and Lumumba,
their hands to the Communist empires for salvation, and their backs to
Atlantica, they would soon learn to their grief what a mirage Russia and
China really present. Atlantica has the further immense advantage that
nearly all the leaders of these new countries were educated in America,
Britain and France, and speak -- and what is more important -- think in
English or French. Add Spanish and Portuguese, and all these
considerations apply also to Latin America. All this immense raw
material power is so much, by the nature of the situation, on the side
of Atlantica, that it could lose this only by continuing the folly of
the past twenty years.

These realities belie the apparent changes that national independence
has introduced into the picture as presented in 1939. Because of this,
and because figures for Soviet Russia and China are always doubtful and
propagandistic and completely lacking on some things (such as --
significantly -- gold), it has not seemed to me worthwhile to revise now
in detail the tables in Chapter V. Moreover, I think that the basic
points in that chapter can be proved without revising its tables, and
that the space can be better used to do two things that I did not
develop there. These are the fact (which I have already touched on) that
the strength that union brings is far greater than the sum of its parts
and -- particularly -- the fact that the power that the mere act of
union gives the free would daunt the Communists much more than
superiority in material power.

WHY UNION'S PROVERBIAL POWER MOST IMPRESSES MOSCOW

Rate freedom's existing power as you will, by federating it politically
and economically we would make it much greater than that of the United
States alone. Mr. K could no longer hope to surpass it by 1970, or 2000.
Moreover, in that period federation would immensely stimulate the growth
of freedom's power in every field -- not only in per capita production
and standards of living, but on the political, military, scientific,
educational and moral sides. These factors are so interrelated that,
when combined the Federal Union way, their power becomes immensely
greater than by any other combination of them. Federation raises their
power as a straight flush does that of five cards.

You may think that instead of five aces -- as in 1939 and 1949 --
freedom now holds only an ace, king, queen, jack and ten. If those cards
are combined the alliance or confederation way, in different "sovereign"
suits, you have only a "straight," which is not too hard to beat in the
poker game the world is in.

If, however, all five cards belong to the same suit, this one change,
which seems so slight, makes the hand 255 times stronger -- an
unbeatable royal flush. Similarly, when freedom's power is no longer
divided among different nations but united in one Atlantic Federal
Union, its hand becomes unbeatable.

The Atlantic community has not yet begun to gain the strength that comes
from organic Union. Here is our vast reservoir of unused power. It costs
us nothing to harness this power -- except the loss of prejudices and
ideas that are contrary to our basic free principles. The power
Atlantica would gain is not only the cheapest, but the kind that would
most impress Moscow, and Peking, for three reasons:

First, the Communists have made a fetish of unity, They have carried
their "monolithic" unity to the extreme of tyranny. They bank on this
extreme unity, which is inherent in Communism, and on the extreme
disunity which they believe is inherent in free enterprise and
individual liberty, to deliver our grandchildren to their system. The
glasses that we Atlanticans wear magnify for us even microscopic dangers
and difficulties to freedom in union -- but those that the Communists
wear magnify immensely in their eyes the proverbial strength and other
advantages that Atlantic Union would bring us.

Secondly, the Communists know that they cannot possibly begin to compete
with us in the kind of power that union brings. For one thing, they have
already practically exhausted this resource, which we Atlanticans have
hardly started to harness. They have carried unity to such extremes that
the Kremlin is now trying to decentralize industry to some degree to
increase efficiency. And they know that whereas the assets they had, or
have, are relatively half-developed, the nations of Atlantica include
the most highly-developed ones on earth; they have the kind of assets
whose power can be most quickly multiplied by the inherent magic of
union.

Atlantic Union would most impress the Communists because, thirdly, it
would come with the force of surprise as would nothing else we could do.
One reason why may suffice. The creation of this Union by common
agreement would prove that a basic Marxist dogma is unfounded. The
Communists believe that "greed for profits" must inevitably drive the
capitalist countries into cut-throat competition and conflict for
markets. This has all too often been true, but the Thirteen States, by
their great experiment in Federal Union, proved that free enterprise
states can -- by applying between them their basic principles instead of
sacrificing them -- create a much richer common market. From it everyone
benefits, by the elimination of trade barriers and other nationalistic
rivalry, and by the continued competition of free enterprise. The latter
requires that the competition be the peaceful, healthy one between
citizens or corporations. The unhealthy, war-producing competition of
nations results from the doctrine of national sovereignty -- not from
the principles of capitalism. The latter are, in fact, contrary to that
doctrine.

By taking the road to Atlantic Federation we knock out this keystone of
Communist ideology. We prove that "St." Lenin and "St." Marx were
completely wrong in their teachings on this essential point. We cannot
deliver a blow that is more bewildering and devastating to the Marxists,
inside and outside Russia, than this is.

The downgrading of Stalin opened a door to revolution in Eastern
Europe. But he was attacked for the terroristic means he employed (and
that are inevitable in the Communist system) -- not for error in his
Marxist thinking. All that Mr. Khrushchev did was to slap Stalin's
bloody hands. Atlantic Union, by peacefully uniting the capitalist
nations, would hit straight at the heart of Leninism and Marxism.

REVOLUTIONIST VALUES, LENIN'S LOW POINT --
AND THE SPIRIT OF `76 AND `87

When Chairman Khrushchev made his first visit to the United States, the
type of American mind that counts on Sears Roebuck catalogs rather than
on Whitman's "By Blue Ontario's Shore" to impress revolutionists, fondly
believed that the sight of our many material achievements would daunt
Mr. K. The event confirmed instead what I wrote in the September Freedom
& Union just before he came:

More probably it will be a stimulating challenge to him. Why? Because he
has what we do not seem to have any more at the top levels -- the
revolutionist's standard of values, which ranks idea-power far above
material power. The revolutionist is a man who believes his idea is so
powerful that he is willing to tackle incredible material odds.

In his Lenin, David Shub writes: "Isolated from events in Russia,
deserted by many of his early followers, struggling to pay his modest
living expenses, seeking in vain to rally Socialists of other lands to
his slogan of international civil war, Lenin, at the end of 1916, was
hitting the bottom rung of his ladder. Never did his words seem to
attract fewer followers."

Utter weakness on his side, plus the fact that on the other side all the
armed power of Russia was mobilized under the Czar, did not suffice to
daunt Lenin -- and ten months later he was in control of Russia. This is
the kind of spirit that has been glorified in Russia, not merely by
propaganda but by what it has achieved before the eyes of living men. It
is bound to affect particularly the values and judgments of those who
have reached the top, as has Mr. K, by their natural aggressiveness,
ruthlessness.

We Americans once put will power and political ideas far above material
strength ... back in the days when Tom Paine wrote of a ragged militia
confronting all the armed might of Great Britain: "We have it in our
power to begin the world over again," and James Wilson told his
fellow-delegates at the 1787 Convention, "we are laying the foundations
for a building, which is to last for ages." But we have drifted so far
from this "Common Sense" of 1776 that our hopes of impressing Mr. K are
now put in electric kitchens rather than in electrifying thought and
action.[10]

WHAT BROUGHT MOSCOW'S ONLY CONCESSIONS

The best proof of the decisive strength that still lies for Atlantica in
Union may be found in Moscow's reactions to the steps already taken in
this direction. In 1948, our atomic monopoly, plus our superior sea and
air power, plus the contrast between our intact industrial plant and the
devastation the war still left in Russia -- all this did not keep Moscow
from daring to blockade Berlin then. But when that led us to form the
Atlantic alliance in 1949, even this "notoriously inefficient" type of
unity (to quote again General Eisenhower's 1952 NATO report) caused
Stalin himself to abandon that blockade, immediately. Moscow, moreover,
left Berlin tranquil for the next ten years. When we moved to strengthen
Atlantic unity still more by admitting the German Federal Republic to
NATO, and permitting it to rearm, Moscow made all manner of threats to
prevent this, but when this was carried through in 1955, the Kremlin --
where Mr. Khrushchev was then in power with Mr. Bulganin -- promptly
withdrew from Austria.

No other moves we have made since the war have brought such important --
and unilateral -- concessions as did these, the only important steps to
strengthen Atlantic unity that we have taken in those fifteen years.

Surely this is proof enough that the power that union brings Atlantica
impresses Moscow more than any other power we can get. It should also
suffice to reassure those who agree that Union would put overwhelming
power behind freedom, but who fear it would make Communism's future so
hopeless that the Kremlin would seek to block it by "getting tough," or
even by launching a preventive war. The fact is that, whether or not the
"balance of terror" suffices to deter attack -- and it will not if by
continued disunion we let that balance become too unfavorable --
Atlantic Union is our surest hope not merely to prevent war, but to put,
and keep, the Communist empires in a conciliatory mood.

MOSCOW IN THE LION'S CAGE

When we see a man with a whip and a chair alone in a cage of lions, we
are amazed that these kings of the jungle haven't sense enough to unite
their immensely superior strength against the tamer, who exploits their
common inner weakness to their humiliation. Similarly, we can count on
the Communists to see how overwhelmingly powerful the Sovereign Nations
of Atlantica would be if only they united, and to be amazed that we
haven't sense enough to see this ourselves. They have seen us act so
senselessly so long in the name of freedom that one can hardly blame
them for concluding that we are no more intelligent than the animals our
nations put their pride in-lions, eagles, fighting cocks. The most
convinced Communists will probably be the last to believe that we free
Atlanticans are really capable of being rational men. And so, whatever
Mr. K may rule the Kremlin, he cannot but believe that all he needs to
do is bluff with a whip, flourish an empty chair, and toss us -- when we
all growl in too ominous a chorus -- enough raw meat to keep our
"Sovereign Nations" snarling at each other. In other words, if the
animals of the Atlantic jungle should show any symptoms of common sense,
the Communist leaders, though inwardly aware that this -- if continued
-- would mean the end of their dreams, could not believe that it could
possibly continue, if they tossed us in time a juicy concession.
Communists simply cannot remain true to Communist thinking and believe
that capitalist peoples can really organically unite. And the success
they have thus far had in checking Atlantic unification by quick
concessions must strengthen them in this belief.

WHY UNION WOULD MAKE MOSCOW CONCILIATORY, NOT WARLIKE

Why did Moscow drop the Berlin blockade when we made the Atlantic
alliance? To remove our incentive to unite further. And it worked.
Instead of moving on toward Union, we Atlanticans were soon growling at
each other over Korea, China, Indo-China. No wonder Premier Malenkov
chortled on August 8, 1953: "If today, in conditions of tension in
international relations, the North Atlantic bloc is rent by internal
strife and contradictions, the lessening of this tension may lead to its
disintegration." A little later he was thrown out by Mr. Khrushchev --
but not his lion-tamer strategy. For when the Atlantic Sovereign Nations
began to think enough like men to strengthen NATO with West Germany in
1955, his successor tossed them the Soviet withdrawal from Austria. This
worked so well that Atlantica, instead of uniting effectively, within a
year was near "its disintegration" over Suez.

To folksy Mr. K, this must have confirmed the wisdom not only of Marxist
thinking but of the old Russian custom of throwing meat to the wolves.
Folk memories of Russians run to wolves rather than lions. That is
another reason to believe that concessions will be the Russian response
when they find the lions of the Atlantic jungle gaining the degree of
intelligence the wolves of the steppes show by hunting in packs.

If an Atlantic Convention moves boldly toward Union the intra-Atlantic
tensions and difficulties that stand in the way will still encourage
Moscow to continue a conciliatory policy, aimed at increasing the
obstacles and lessening incentive to unite, rather than to risk a
warlike attitude that would increase that incentive and lessen the
difficulties facing Union. It will take time to make an Atlantic Union,
and in the earlier stages success is bound to seem most problematical;
when the Rubicon is crossed it will seem insignificant compared to the
mountains ahead. As Atlantica advances toward Union, success will always
remain in doubt. This will help keep Moscow trying to stop it with
bigger and better concessions. One can be sure that through the
Convention stage, and even more during the stage of ratifying a Union
constitution, we Atlanticans will ourselves give plenty of reason to
believe that we will never be men enough to achieve Union without war.
And so our doubts, and their wishful thinking, will combine to lead the
Communists to destruction. Once Atlantic Union confronts them -- a fait
accompli that proves that Marx's basic belief about us was false -- they
will be as helplessly vulnerable as the trainer who suddenly finds that
his whip, his chair and his chunk of meat no longer work.

____

1. The poem and the chapter on the philosophy "Of Freedom and Union"
were written, the former in 1928, the latter (in first draft) in 1932,
for other books that I have never finished. After the basic idea of
Atlantic Union of the Free came to me, late in 1933, and grew into Union
Now, I rewrote and expanded the philosophy behind it, and later added
the poem, which seemed to me to fit in this picture, too.

2. One must achieve, in fact, more than the ideal in the end, for one's
standards and means of attaining them improve in the process of seeking
to attain the original goal.

3. Even in the 17th century this Empire's duration led the English
diplomat, Ricaut, stationed in Constantinople when the British Empire
was only beginning, to write a book to explain what made the Turkish
Empire endure. In it he exclaimed: "To discover the maxims of government
of the best established Republics, such as those founded on reason and
on religion, is no easier than to decipher an enigma and explain a
mystery.... When I consider the Turkish manner of governing, I cannot
but admire the long duration of this great and vast Empire, and I can
attribute its immovable firmness inside and its expansion through the
constant progress of its arms only to some supernatural cause rather
than to ordinary political maxims." This is my translation from the
French edition of his book, entitled, l'Etat Prsent de l'Empire
Ottoman, published by Jean Lucas in Rouen in 1687, which I bought in the
Istanbul bazaar in 1923.

4. For a much fuller discussion of all this, see the author's Freedom
Against Itself (Harper 1954) especially Chapters 9, "The Cinderella
Science", 14, "How Freedom Arms Dictatorship," and 15, "Freedom is
Hardest to Govern."

5. Reasons why freedom is the key to peace, and to production are set
forth concisely on pages 268-273 of the Postwar edition of Union Now.

6. Now (October 13, 1960) on earth.

7. See Chapter 9 for this estimate by P. F. Brundage, former Director of
the United States Budget Bureau.

8. See the end of this chapter and also Chapter 12, for further
reassurance Atlantic Union would give against Communist aggression.

9. This chapter had to be omitted in Book II from lack of space in this
volume but its results may be found in summary form in Chapter I, third
section, entitled "Fifteen Founder Democracies."

10. Fortunately, Vice President Nixon's experience with Mr. K at the
kitchen door seems to have awakened him to the need of fighting ideas
with better ones, judging from his masterly TV speech to the Soviet
audience, -- and even more from the Atlantic Confederation proposal he
later joined Governor Rockefeller in making (which we shall discuss in
the next chapter).

