CHAPTER 11

We Must -- Like William Tell -- Aim High


O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!
  would God I had died for thee
O Absalom, my son, my son! -- II Samuel 18:33

This feat of Tell, the archer, will be told
While yonder mountains stand upon their base
By Heaven! the apple's cleft right through the core.
         -- Schiller, William Tell, Act III, Scene 3

Two chronic blunders have contributed heavily to past failures to unite
the Atlantic community effectively enough. One is that its leaders have
either failed to keep their eye on the target, or have expected to hit
it while manifestly aiming under it. The other is that they have
persistently tackled the problem piecemeal, never as the whole it is.
Few Atlanticans would deny that their true target is:

To unite the Atlantic community soon enough, effectively enough and
economically enough to save freedom -- for once in our time -- without
another World War or another Depression ... and lead the world to the
new era which scientific, industrial, political and moral development
make possible now.

Would you not agree that this is the target the people want their
leaders to hit, and that they are not likely to hit it -- unless they
keep aiming clearly at it?

For years they have undershot the target with tragic consequences, and
constancy. But still we do not yet even make sure that those who fill
our front pages with their proposals and policies are so much as looking
at the bull's-eye. Nor do we yet ask them the commonsense question: Have
you raised your sights enough to correct the previous miss?

The disconcerting fact is that our leaders have never really aimed at
hitting our true Atlantic target. They have aimed instead at not
disturbing the habits and prejudices of those who depend on leadership
to keep them from war and depression -- and not keep them forever on
some brink, or facing "long years of tension." When failures have
disturbed the people, leadership has lured them back to a fool's
paradise by piping that old, old tune -- the shot was aimed "in the
right direction."

THE APPLE -- OR OUR SONS?

The fallacy that it suffices to aim in the right direction did not fool
William Tell. He aimed straight enough and high enough to hit the apple,
not the son -- and he hit it, even with bow and arrow.

If we are to save our own sons (instead of the apple of Atlantic discord
we seem often to treasure more), it can not be said too often that we
must raise our sights. True, this involves doing something that no
Madison Avenue flannel-suiter would dare risk: Aiming over the head of a
boy. Even so, wise citizens will henceforth subject every proposal to
this practical test: Is it likely to hit the apple? Or is it just
another of those shots "in the right direction" that have been killing
our sons? The Atlantic Convention is a good occasion to begin applying
this test.

Contrast the present spirit with that of the Founding Fathers when they
tackled the problem of uniting Thirteen States effectively. If the
United States is freedom's citadel today, it is because a few leading
citizens had the vision at the dawn of the steam age to aim explicitly
at giving the people what they really wanted, a free "government
intended to last for ages" (to quote James Madison at the 1787
Convention), and to build it on lines great enough to permit their
infant federal union to grow in 170 years to one of fifty states and
180,000,000 citizens, drawn from all races and nations of men.

Is it realistic and practical, after all, for the Atlantic Convention to
allow its vision to be limited to half-measures now, when men in other
fields are preparing to circumnavigate the moon as boldly as Magellan
prepared more than 400 years ago to girdle the Earth?

THE TREES, NOT THE FOREST

Had William Tell been able to use a shotgun instead of an arrow, there
would have been less doubt of his hitting the apple -- but his son would
have faced another danger our sons do, as does also the Atlantic
Convention. The fashion in such meetings today is to center attention on
the trees, not the forest. They divide the delegates into a number of
committees and subcommittees, each of which will discuss some pine, oak,
thorn, apple or nut tree. That was what happened at the Atlantic
Congress in London in 1958. It made no provision for any discussion of
the Atlantic problem as a whole. True, it had a "Declaration Committee,"
but it was composed of committee officers rather than delegates and its
duty was to nail together their separate findings. This amounts to
building a house of lumber sawed from pine, oak and other trees -- doing
a useful thing but hardly providing the view that sees the living forest
despite the trees.

The Atlantic Congress set-up was, of course, the one that has been
followed for fifty years. It seems a very practical approach to a
complex problem.... Until one recalls how often it has failed, how
illusory its successes have been.

The Atlantic Convention will be under heavy pressure to devote its
attention to current problems; it needs to keep in mind that its true
task is not to tackle such problems, but to work out machinery that will
tackle them effectively.

If we liken current affairs to rocks and agree that we need something
better than the hammer we are now using to break them with, then the
function of this Convention should be, not to hammer at any rocks nor
bother the diplomats who are hammering at them, but to confine itself
strictly to devising a better implement -- a rock-crusher that will
break rocks with less effort and cost, and crush even those that our
hammers now are unable to break.

Put in other terms, the task is to find how to make the Atlantic body
politic healthy enough to meet growing demands, dangers, opportunities.
As I pointed out in testifying in favor of calling this Convention at
the hearing which the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held on this
proposal on May 17, 1960:

NATO is filled with specialists on the muscular, or military, side of
the Atlantic problem. Recent plans for organization of Atlantic economic
cooperation show that the specialists on its digestive ills are not
idle. There is obvious need for these and other specialists -- but it is
no less obvious that the military, economic, monetary and political
parts of the Atlantic community are as intricately inter-related as are
the muscles, stomach, heart and brain of each of us. Good health
requires us to keep always in mind the body they together form. But we
have been so concerned with the various parts of the Atlantic man that
we have neglected completely to provide him with a family doctor -- or
even a college to educate some general practitioners to treat this body
politic as a living whole.

As The New York Times correspondent covering the League of Nations from
1929 to 1939 I had to report all kinds of conferences that tackled its
problem piecemeal -- none that tackled it as a whole. This piecemeal
approach gave the illusion then, as it still does, that it simplified
the problem, was more "practical." In reality, this illusion gave a
false sense of security, wasted the time in which realistic remedial
action was still possible, led to World War II.

The ten-year course I had in this school of experience led me to
appreciate what I fear is still very little understood in our country
today -- the superiority of the Convention method by which our Founding
Fathers tackled the problem of getting their thirteen nation-states to
work together effectively yet democratically. Their Convention set up no
committee of military specialists, no political committee, no economic
committee. It had only one committee (apart from drafting committees) --
a Committee of the Whole through which it wrestled from beginning to end
with the problem as a whole.

Compare the common sense of their approach with the complications of the
"functional" approach. When you look at where the Atlantic community
stands today after eleven years of this piecemeal approach and think of
the enduring contribution to freedom our Founding Fathers made in only
three months with their Convention approach-do you wonder that I feel
that any patriot should support this resolution which would at least
tackle the problem now by a method that makes sense? Certainly I do not
wonder that two [of the Committee] sponsors of this wise approach are
experienced family doctors, general practitioners -- Dr. Morgan and
Dr. Judd.[1]

WHY THE FEDERAL PACKAGE IS PRACTICAL

The overall approach is, of course, a federal unionist one. But most
non-federalists would agree that the political, moral, cultural,
military, economic and other questions before the Atlantic Convention
are, in fact, closely inter-related -- so much so that to tackle them as
a whole is at least as practical -- if not more so -- than the piecemeal
method.

The federal union approach is concerned with each of the major problems
facing the Atlantic Convention -- and Community -- but with each as a
part of the whole, not as something to be considered without relation to
the rest. It offers an answer to them all together, which is also an
answer to them each. Nor is this a theoretical approach, or solution.

Ever since the 1787 Convention stumbled onto the overall approach and
answer, every one of the federations now existing in the world has been
created by this same basic technique: Delegates who centered on the
overall problem put together in one package, called a constitution, a
political, economic, monetary, military, cultural and moral union,
combined with free federal legislative, executive and judicial machinery
to handle what remained of these problems in future.

Some fear that this method endangers progress that might be made on a
small scale -- that it risks the bird in hand for two in the bush. But
the Convention has no bird in hand; at most it risks losing only a few
feathers. And history makes the risk seem even less. The fact is that
Thirteen States which were never able to agree even on a mild treaty to
regulate trade between them, did accept not only this regulation but
full economic union when it was wrapped up inseparably with an effective
federal government and an organic political military, monetary, moral
and citizens union. No single item in this impressive package would
probably have been accepted had it been offered separately. Certainly
none ever has been.

TRUTH IS STRANGER -- AND STRONGER

That the greater overall answer should be accepted where the smaller
step failed may seem paradoxical, even incredible. But truth is
proverbially stranger -- and stronger -- than fiction, and to succeed,
the Atlantic Convention needs to hear and follow truth.

To affect reality, the Convention must reflect it, at least to the point
of adequately confronting the piecemeal with the overall approach, the
functionalist with the federalist answer, "gradualism" with
"do-it-in-time." If it confronts these opposites strongly enough, it may
not merely blow away the cobwebs that now entrap Atlantic thinking, but
generate the power and vision that peace requires and that full and free
debate of great issues gives.

WHY UNION WINS APPROVAL WHERE HALF-MEASURES LOSE

How can the same people who have rejected this or that piecemeal
proposal paradoxically accept the full federal answer? Because it faces
them with down-to-earth reality, yet high inspiration. A tariff is
part-and-parcel of the depression-dictatorship-war complex, but when the
only thing in this complex that the people are called on to decide is a
tariff question, they tend to think of it only in terms of dollars,
cents and their most selfish economic interests; they become very
narrow-minded and short-sighted indeed. When the federal answer is
submitted to them, they have to face their problem as a whole. Instead
of thinking that they live by bread alone, they see that life requires
much more than that. The broader picture broadens their thinking,
improves their vision, develops their judgment, inspires their souls. So
many elements in it are important to them that they have to decide which
are the more important.

Instead of calculating only in dollars, they have to weigh intangibles,
too. Where the trade issue directly interests only a part of the people,
federal union presents an issue with something in it to interest deeply
every citizen, the politically-minded as well as the economic-minded,
the intellectual, the churchman, the parent, the student, the scientist
-- all matter of minds and men. Instead of a picture that seems all loss
to these, all gain to those, and a matter of indifference to the rest,
Atlantic Union has something to interest each directly. It presents so
many possibilities as both to defy and invigorate the imagination; no
one can feel that he is a total loser, everyone sees some gain in it to
compensate for whatever loss he may fear it will cause him. Each has to
decide which are his higher values.

What happens in such circumstances? True values assert themselves with
most men. And so, when the people of the Thirteen States, who had
refused to enter into even a mild degree of economic union, had to
decide on the Federal Constitution, the fact that it created a full
economic and monetary union played a very minor role in the discussion
that followed. The great debate -- and it was a great debate indeed in
Virginia and New York[2] -- centered on the moral and political issues
that the Constitution raised.

Despite Shays's Rebellion, resulting from the fact that economic
depression and monetary depreciation had led a reluctant Congress to
call the Federal Convention, the debate on ratifying the Constitution
gave scant attention to the subjects that engrossed the United States in
the days of the New Deal. The classic book which it produced, The
Federalist, is no treatise on trade, economics, finance, or military
defense. Although its editor and chief author, Alexander Hamilton,
prided himself on his war record, and was a genius in the economic and
financial field, it is concerned almost exclusively with political and
moral questions.

This will surprise many today -- so widely have we unconsciously
accepted the Marxist view that man lives by bread alone. (This at a time
when no people on earth devotes so small a fraction of their daily work
to satisfying the body's needs, and so much to the moral -- or immoral
-- business of "keeping up with the Joneses," as do we Americans, and
Atlanticans.) Yet I feel sure that, if we put people to the test, we
shall find that they still have today the same values as the generation
that centered attention on the political and moral issues that the
Federal Constitution raised. To think otherwise is to believe that all
the sacrifices made since then to preserve and advance the moral and
political principles of liberty-and-union were made in vain.

After all, when men (and now also women, who then had no vote) face an
Atlantic Federal Constitution and have to consider not merely what its
effect will be on the price of wool, automobiles, chemical products,
perfume or cheese, but which is more important to them: The value of
this or that alias for bread, or the value of their own dignity, liberty
and life -- and that of their sons, daughters, grandchildren. When they
have to face this issue, there can be but one answer.

When the issue is full federation, the great moral as well as material
and military advantages that its economic and monetary side would bring
will shine forth -- not be hidden by the smoke-screens of selfishness
which economic union would face if presented alone. Only by presenting
to the people of Atlantica a full Federal Constitution for them to
ratify, or reject, can one put before them this realistic yet idealistic
choice -- and give them a chance to show their mettle.

"Everyone knows that we would make this Atlantic Union if we got into
another World War -- and still could -- and so it seems common sense to
me to try to make it in time to prevent such war." A Southern United
States Senator once said this to me, and it set me thinking:

The Founding Fathers sacrificed 4,435 sons in the Revolutionary War
before the Thirteen States "would sacrifice their sovereignty" enough to
ratify the Articles of Confederation. Thanks to the fact that the
William Tells at the Philadelphia Convention courageously aimed high
enough to hit the target which the Declaration of Independence had set
up, the people took the still more revolutionary step from confederation
to Federal Union without a single family sacrificing a single son.

It took the sacrifice of 53,403 sons to bring the League of Nations
Covenant before the Senate, but this was not enough to get it ratified.

When 293,986 more sons of American families had been sacrificed, the
Senate ratified the United Nations Charter, 89 to 2.

There is no question that we must, sooner or later, take the step from
Atlantic alliance to Atlantic Federal Union. The only question is: How
much sacrifice of life will it cost?

Shall we continue to aim so low as to sacrifice millions of sons before
we take this step? Or shall Atlantic Union come without the killing of a
single boy -- because the members of the Atlantic Convention prove to be
a composite William Tell? It is for them to answer -- and for you.

____

1. Dr. Thomas E. Morgan (Democrat, Pennsylvania), Chairman of the
Foreign Affairs Committee and Dr. Walter Judd (Republican, Minnesota).

2. See "When Patrick Henry Fought the Federal Constitution," by Jonathan
Elliot, "How Virginia Came to Vote for Federal Union," by Albert J.
Beveridge, and "How Hamilton Won New York for Federal Union," by Bower
Aly, $0.20 each, Freedom & Union Press, Washington 9, D.C.

