CHAPTER 12

Fourfold Fulfillment


  If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if
thou doest not well, sin lies at the door. -- Genesis 4:7.

Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
  The little tyrant of his fields withstood.
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest. ***
-- Thomas Gray, Elegy in a Country Churchyard.

We have more than danger to spur us on; we have the certainty of high
fulfillment in all four of our embodiments -- as part of mankind, as
part of Atlantica, as part of the nation we love, and as ourselves,
individually rather than compositely.

As part of mankind, we fulfill ourselves through Atlantic Union by doing
the highest service we can do for Man, we do our part -- which only we
can do -- in assuring that today's lurid atomic-electronic light is the
sunrise of man's vast future, not the sunset. We meet the responsibility
we must meet if we are to merit the name which Paine rightly called
man's "high and only title" -- "Man."

We must expect much of mankind to mistrust us and our motives at the
start of our Union of the Free. Our past faults now outweigh our virtues
among all those who have suffered from them. We must expect this to
continue to color their judgments of us for some time to come, and keep
them more inclined to have fear than faith. After all, we ourselves fear
rather than trust the rest of mankind; the obvious faults in the other
nations, old and new, make us more skeptical than confident of their
future and its effects on us. But whatever doubts and fears about them
we may express, or have, we do know that it is in the interest of our
freedom that they should succeed in their efforts to advance in
liberty-and-union themselves. We do wish them well, and we do not mean
to do anything to interfere with their efforts, however misguided they
may seem to us -- unless they lose their fight against dictatorship and
directly aid its efforts to destroy liberty-and-union among us, too.

We know that no matter which of these nations -- whether as great as
India or as small as Lebanon, as new as Ghana and Nigeria or as old as
Japan and Thailand, as far West as Brazil or as far East as Burma,
whether African, Arabian, or Argentine, Iranian, Iraqi or Israeli,
Mexican or Moroccan, Pakistani or Peruvian, Spanish or Sudanese; whether
Animist, Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Jewish, or Islamic; whether
heir of the ruins of Ankar-wat, Assyria, the Aztecs, Babylon, Baghdad,
Egypt, the Incas, Persia -- no matter which of these peoples, we know
that we shall warmly welcome every proof they bring in the coming years
that they are winning in their sector of Man's struggle to free himself,
and work peacefully with his neighbors.

We can therefore trust that, no matter how fearful and suspicious they
may be of Atlantic Union at the outset, they will each in their hearts
hope that our Union's policies toward them will remove their fears. As
our deeds destroy their doubts, and our Union proves, as did that of the
Thirteen States, that its success is in their interest, too, we can have
faith that Atlantica will attract them to it more and more If America
has lost some of that appeal in the last decade, is it not because it
ceased to lead forward with the principle of freedom-and-union, and
turned instead toward the Old World's system of power politics,
alliances and arms racing? For America to return to its true tradition,
by leading the way to a "more perfect Union," should suffice both to win
back its lost friends and to assure them that no such error would mar
the Atlantic Union's appeal to mankind.

Our Union of the Free should start with greater attracting power than
the United States, for the latter began with the stain of slavery on it,
and without the experience in freedom and federation we now have. But
suppose that the Atlantic Union should merely equal the American Union
in rousing and fulfilling the hopes of mankind. Even so, it would draw
to it the new nations -- and those still suffering oppression -- by the
same magnetic power that America has so long possessed, as Lord Acton
attested in 1866:

Historians affirm that the French Revolution was partly caused by the
successful revolution which founded the United States. If that could be
at a time when nothing had been achieved but independence, and their
Constitution was only beginning the career it has so grandly run, it is
easy to estimate how much their influence would be increased by the
permanence of their success. Accordingly America exercised a power of
attraction over Europe of which the great migration is only a
subordinate sign. Beyond the millions who have crossed the ocean. who
shall reckon the millions whose hearts and hopes are in the United
States, to whom the rising sun is in the West, and whose movements are
controlled by the distant magnet, though it has not drawn them away?[1]

RE-ASSURANCE TO THE NEW NATIONS

Some fear to federate Atlantica lest the new nations should interpret
this as a "ganging up of the imperialists against them" and troop into
the Kremlin's arms. Moscow undoubtedly will try to make them do this.
Three facts, however, should re-assure the fearful:

First, whatever the leaders of the under-developed nations may fear or
say, most of them are realists enough (a) to know that such a policy
would sacrifice all the advantages they hope to gain from neutrality,
and all the material aid which they can get only from Atlantica, and (b)
to refrain from jumping thus from the devil into the deep sea before
they have taken time to see the Union in action, and test whether its
policies are in fact so dangerous in their regard as to justify so
desperate a jump. Those of their leaders who are not this realistic are
bound to come to grief, from so great a defect in their judgment, and be
replaced by wiser compatriots.

Secondly, there is no reason whatever to expect or fear that an Atlantic
Union would follow any policy that would cause many, or any, of these
nations to become satellites, protectorates or colonies of the Communist
empires. If the Union's leaders were that unwise and that untrue to the
very principles that led them to found it -- and if the people of
Atlantica did not replace them at the next election with better men, the
Union would deserve to lose.

Thirdly, there are at least three strong reasons -- military, material
and moral -- to expect this Union to pursue a far wiser and more liberal
policy toward the under-developed nations than any country normally
follows, or is likely to follow, without Atlantic federation. The
military reason is that the Union's much stronger defensive power would
make it need allies less than does the United States, and therefore it
should be more willing to help neutrals, with no strings attached to its
aid. At the same time the huge economies on defense, which only
federation permits, would make much greater public and private funds
available. As we noted in Chapter 9, the former United States Budget
Director, P. F. Brundage, has estimated that Atlantic unification, even
in moderate degree, would save the United States at least $10 billion a
year on defense. On this basis we estimated the saving for all the NATO
nations would be nearly $13 billion annually. Part of this would no
doubt go back to the citizens in tax reductions -- but that would
increase the funds available for private investments. The other part
might well go into the aid projects that are better handled on a public
basis. Nor would these $13 billion a year be the only fresh resources
that Union would bring to the solution of this problem.

Turn now to the material side of the question. The establishment of this
Union would improve the economy of Atlantica to an incalculable degree
by cutting costs and spurring action in industrial production, trade,
agriculture, mining, transportation, finance, invention, science and
education. It would do this (a) by eliminating the multitudinous
barriers, waste efforts, uncertainties and vexations with which
unlimited national sovereignty now hobbles all these activities in
Atlantica, and (b) by replacing them with the greater efficiency, the
sounder currency, the stronger confidence, the vaster and more economic
mass production, and the immense stimulus to private enterprise -- and
to thinking and acting on a grand scale which the achievement of
political and economic Union would bring in every nation and in every
economic sector.

We saw in Chapter 4 how immediate and immeasurable was the improvement
in the economy of the Thirteen States, once they changed from
confederation to Federal Union. But their economic assets were of a kind
that could not benefit from Union half so much, or half so fast, as can
those of Atlantica today. Not only would the Gross Union Product of
Atlantica be much greater at the start than the sum total of the Gross
National Products of the Atlantic nations now; it would grow at a faster
rate thereafter. But this very growth would mean a better market for the
other nations, both as regards the sale of their products and the
purchase of goods from the Union. So astonishing is the prospective
economic growth that union would bring Atlantica that Professor Maurice
Allais, the noted French political economist whose book L'Europe Unie,
won in 1960 the Grand Prize of the Atlantic Community in Paris, went so
far as to assert in it:

The economic advantages the free nations would derive from this policy
would far surpass those which they derive from the peaceful uses of
atomic energy.

Moreover, the powerful attraction such a community of the free Atlantic
countries would exercise by its very existence, its exceptional
prosperity and the immense hope it would raise among men everywhere.
would result in slow dissolution of the totalitarian world.[2]

The combination of stronger defense and greater production, both
attained at much less cost than is possible otherwise, would provide the
huge material means needed if the problems of the under-developed
nations are to be tackled with any hope of success. By no other policy
than Atlantic Union, in fact, can these nations, or we, find the vast
means needed in the fast time required. Self-interest on both sides
would suffice to assure that Union would result in much greater
development of these countries. Such development through mutually
advantageous trade would be much healthier than any help on a charity
basis or on the political pressure basis that is inevitable where the
economy is monopolized by the state, as it is in the Communist empires.
The Atlantic Union could not realize its potentials in higher standards
of production and living for its citizens without buying much more raw
materials from Latin America, Africa and Asia than they can now supply
-- and so it would have to help them develop themselves. Nor -- as we
have already noted -- can they sell enough of their products in the
Communist market, or in any other market except the Atlantic one, to
finance themselves in this self-respecting way.

Now for the moral reason why one can be sure that an Atlantic Union
would be vastly to the advantage of the under-developed countries.
Consider its moral effects. Before a federation could be made by the
people of the Atlantic nations in peacetime, there would have to be a
profound moral revolution among them, particularly in the stronger ones.
They must not merely overthrow the principle of unlimited national
sovereignty, which now has such a stranglehold on them, but replace it
with the opposite principle of citizen sovereignty. They must discard
the notion that their nation is a law unto itself in its dealings with
other peoples. They must begin to practice in some fields, with some
nations, the democratic Rule of Law which they now practice only within
their own boundaries. By that Rule, even the Sovereign Citizens do not
claim to be above the Law. Union means they have put the Rights of Man
above the Rights of Nations, that they seek to increase their own power
over their government and lessen its power to interfere with their
individual lives liberties, happiness. Union means they have shifted
from fear of foreigners to faith in foreigners, and that they have begun
to "love thy neighbor as thyself" in a far greater way than they, or any
other nations, ever have done before. To achieve Union they must be
moved by the deepest desire to live in peace that any people can have.

They must, in short, have attained broader understanding, deeper virtue
and high spiritual standards than they have now -- or they will not
peacefully agree to form an Atlantic Federal Union. It does not make
sense to assume that a Union thus established is going to follow
policies toward the under-developed nations that are not imbued with the
same understanding, virtue and spirit that brought the Union into being
-- let alone "gang up" against these peoples whom its Member Nations
have already liberated peacefully. One can be sure that once the people
of Atlantica cross the Rubicon separating unlimited national sovereignty
from the citizen sovereignty of freedom-and-union, all their actions
thereafter will be favorably affected by this moral revolution.

The moral effect on the under-developed nations, which the achievement
of Atlantic Union will have, will be no less beneficial. The prestige
that goes with strength and unexpected success made them look with more
respect on Communism, once Moscow led with Sputnik. To achieve Atlantic
Union in peace in the near future will be no less impressive -- a
success, no less unexpected -- and the strength it will give to freedom
will be much more immediate and down-to-earth. When the under-developed
nations find that their fears, and Communism's propaganda, about the
Union were unfounded, and realize what a boon its creation is to them,
this pleasant surprise will attract them to it all the more. The example
the Atlantic peoples have set in the past, in putting national
sovereignty above all, has been followed in the Balkans, Central Europe,
Asia, Africa. The example we Atlanticans will set, in putting the rights
of men above the rights of nations when we form an Atlantic Union of the
Free, should work a moral revolution, too, in all these other nations.
So, too, should the fact that Union brings far greater strength to
freedom than national sovereignty ever has. All this should also speed
the evolution of these nations from unlimited national sovereignty to
the realization of the dream of Latin American federation, African
federation, Mideast federation and Southern Asian federation which the
wisest leaders in these areas have cherished since the time of Bolivar
-- thus far in vain.

YEAST IN THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST

What of the yeast effect that Atlantic Union will have on the many
peoples who are now held in the cruelest oppression by the Russian and
Chinese empires -- many for centuries, some only for fifteen years or
less? Certainly Moscow will have reason to fear the effect the mere
creation of the Union of the Free will have on its Achilles heel -- the
peoples of Eastern Europe. Unlike the rest of the Russian Empire, they
have known in their lifetimes something better than Czarist and
Communist despotism. Who are these peoples? They include the Poles whose
extreme democratic instincts led them to the anarchy that was the source
of their undoing when Kosziuscko fell and who remain the most dauntless,
romantic fighters for freedom (with one exception).... And the East
Germans, who only a few years ago stood up -- though armed only with
stones -- against Russian tanks.... And the Balts who have kept alive
their dream of renewed independence even longer.... And the Czechs and
Slovaks who revere John Huss, and knew Mazaryk and Benes in the
flesh.... And the Hungarians who in 1956 wrested from the Poles the
title for incredible gallantry for freedom, ... And the stalwart peoples
of the Balkans ... the Albanians who gave great heroes both to the Roman
and Turkish empires ... the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes who, typically led
in defying the thunders of Moscow ... the Rumanians who cannot forget
their name which recalls the frontiers of Rome ... and the Bulgarians
who, I am sure, respect their assassinated Stambouliski even more than I
do still, although my acquaintance with him in the early 1920's as a
foreign correspondent was all too short.

No empire has ever found these peoples of Eastern Europe easy to digest
-- and when the achievement of Atlantic Union revives their hopes, they
will give Moscow worse than ulcers. Nowhere will Atlantic Union, by its
mere existence, have so strong a magnetic power so soon as in these
peoples so many of whom cherish student memories of Paris and London, or
family ties with the United States. It needs but exist to make them hope
that they could become members of it, once they freed themselves. Hope
can work wonders -- and we can not devise a greater wonder-worker than
this Union would be to the oppressed in Eastern Europe ... and in the
Russian and the Chinese empires.

It will exert a far greater attraction on them than European Union. They
-- and especially the Poles and Czechs -- have cause to fear Germany.
They dread that the Germans would soon dominate a European Union and
lead it into adventures eastward. But there would be no possibility of
the Germans dominating an Atlantic Union. The addition of the Americans,
British, Canadians and Scandinavians to their friends in France and
Benelux would make this Union of the Free the most positive attraction
to them that is conceivable.

TO BRING DICTATORSHIP DOWN PROM WITHIN

Atlantic Union would also bring new hope, only to a less degree, to the
Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians and the many other peoples whom the
Czars conquered. Those who have suffered oppression longest are, of
course, the Russian and the Chinese peoples themselves. I would not
count on their throwing off their present oppressors soon -- but I would
not be surprised if this followed the creation of the Union of the Free
much sooner than others would expect. Certainly I would not lose faith
in the future freedom of peoples who have shown the courage and
resourcefulness of the Russians, and who have behind them so long and
great a civilization as the Chinese -- and so many close ties with the
people of Atlantica. The very intensity and persistence of the
anti-American campaign in Communist China is to me strong proof that it
is hard to kill the warm feeling that so many living Chinese have had so
long for America as the land of freedom and their surest friend.

So long as the dictatorships in Russia and China fear to let their
subjects hear two sides of basic questions with equal freedom, or freely
choose between two parties, I shall conclude that they themselves have
no confidence in the solidity of their regimes. There is much talk today
of the difference in viewpoint on Communist doctrine between dictators
Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung. This reminder that believers in anything
are certain to divide on some things if they are free to do so, serves
to point up the lack of confidence each dictator has in his own country.
There are known to be Russian Communists who agree with Peiping's
interpretation of Communism, and no doubt there are many Chinese
Communists who still follow Moscow. But neither Moscow nor Peiping
permits its domestic Communist opposition (let alone a Capitalist or
Socialist opposition) to organize itself as a right wing or left wing
Communist party and put its case freely before the people. While both
Moscow and Peiping are afraid to let their people choose even between
two brands of Communism, it would seem to me that their "monolithic
unity" is built on sand, and that one need only await the right climate
conditions to witness its inevitable fall.

By this, I do not mean war or any tough policy on our part. Every system
has its inherent weakness which can bring it down from within. The basic
weakness in our free system is the tendency to carry freedom to the
point of anarchy. Communism does all it can to exploit this weakness and
to help create the conditions in which the free peoples are most likely
to divide against themselves to their mutual destruction. The
corresponding inherent weakness in the Communist system is that it
carries unity to the extreme degree of tyranny, which exposes it to the
dangers of rigidity and corrosive, all-pervading suspicion. Its leaders
do not trust their people, or even the rank-and-file in the Communist
party; they distrust still more each other. This distrust is bound to be
even greater between Moscow and Peiping, and between Moscow and Warsaw,
and between Moscow and its viceroys in the other satellites. The
restiveness and hope which the creation of an Atlantic Union would cause
in Eastern Europe by giving new life to the American, English and French
revolutions, would make both Moscow and its Kadars far more distrustful
of the people they rule, and of each other. It would thus, willy-nilly,
create the kind of "climate" in which mutual suspicion behind the Iron
Curtain would be undermining most effectively the foundations of the
rigid Communist structure.

Atlantic Union would also face Moscow with this dilemma: To hold its
satellites then, it would have to make its rule either more oppressive
or more liberal. The former course would cost it heavily in the outside
world, serve to unite the Atlantic peoples more strongly, and increase
the revolutionary pressure in Eastern Europe. The latter course would
make it hard for Moscow to keep control of the satellites -- or to keep
from liberalizing its rule in Russia, too. These examples may suffice to
suggest the domestic dangers and difficulties which the mere creation of
the Union of the Free would bring to the "monolithic" Empires of the
East.

OUR FULFILLMENT AS ATLANTIC CITIZENS

Atlantic Union would enable us to fulfill ourselves as Atlanticans. This
is perhaps the part of our personality that we have starved the most. We
all do belong to the free community of Atlantica -- and in "we" and it I
would include for present purposes such non-NATO peoples as the
Australians, Austrians, Irish, New Zealanders, Swedes and Swiss -- but
we do not yet acknowledge our love for it and our belonging to it, as we
do for our nation. We show in many ways, however, that we are
Atlanticans.

Most people in this community, when they travel or study abroad, do so
in the other nations of Atlantica. Most of the "foreign" books, plays,
works of art we like the most in each of our nations come from the other
Atlantic nations. We do our "foreign" business mainly with the rest of
Atlantica, and most easily. The "foreign" history we know best is their
history -- and our own (no matter which our nation) closely interlocks
with that of other Atlantic peoples. Most of our heroes and heroines
lived in Atlantica. Our nations -- especially the English-speaking ones,
but also the French, Belgians, Dutch, Italians -- are a mixture of
Atlantic peoples. Inter-marriage is still greatest, most successful and
most rewarding within our Atlantic community.

Each of our peoples thinks its own way of life is peculiar to it -- but
the nearest approach to it each finds in other Atlantic nations. And so,
whatever our nation may be, when we go abroad we feel most at home in
other parts of Atlantica. We share more concepts and customs with each
other than with others. When in Asia or Africa we find we Atlanticans
naturally gravitate toward each other -- and Asians and Africans tend to
lump us all together, whether favorably or unfavorably. When the freedom
each of our peoples holds dearest is endangered in any of our nations,
we turn most hopefully to each other for help, or for refuge. More than
once most of us have fought together the battle of freedom. Actions, we
all say, speak louder than words, and our actions say we all belong at
heart to Atlantica. Why not say it then in words? And in votes --
hallmark of the citizen?

ATLANTICA -- THE COUNTRY WITHOUT A MAN

Why not fulfill the dreams of our Victor Hugos, our Goethes, our John
Stuart Mills? Why not begin to answer by Atlantic Union the prayer that
our Benjamin Franklin sent to a fellow Atlantican on the other side of
the ocean on December 4, 1789 -- a few months after his thirty-five-year
dream of uniting the Thirteen Colonies under a common free government
had been achieved:

God grant that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough knowledge of
the Rights of Man may pervade all the nations of the Earth so that a
Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface and say, "This is
my Country."

Since then liberty has won all the peoples around the North Atlantic
which Franklin crossed so often in its service. Yet still Americans,
Britons, Frenchmen, and the other free peoples of Atlantica remain alien
to each other in one respect -- politically. When they set foot on each
other's soil they feel at home -- but do not say, as the dying philosopher
prayed they would -- "This is my Country!" We have heard the story of
the "Man without a Country," and we would wish no worse fate for anyone.
Yet there can be something perhaps worse -- a country filled with
millions of sovereign citizens of various nations, who act as if it
belonged to them, but do not yet dare say they belong to it. There is
only one such country now, and it is Atlantica.

This is the embodiment of ourselves which we Atlanticans still keep as
Cinderella in the cellar -- and which Atlantic Union would bring to the
ball and to Prince Charming. And what a true fairy tale of fulfillment
that would be!

Consider how the different peoples of Atlantica supplement each other --
the French and the Germans, or the French and the British, or the
British and the Italians or Germans, or the Dutch and Belgians, or the
Greeks and Turks -- to mention no more examples in Europe. Consider,
too, how the people of North America and those of Western Europe
complement one another, as man and woman do. Consider how much they need
each other to be their true selves.

Consider the marriage of Western Europe and North America, of the old in
culture with the old in free self-government, of the new in so many arts
and ideas with the new in so many practical things, of the lands where
the outstanding building in town is a medieval church with the lands
where the finest building in town is a public school ... Consider the
interchange of teachers and students which now goes on among the fifty
states of the United States, and project this on an Atlantic scale. How
many more European young men and women will be studying in American
colleges, and how many more Americans and Canadians will be having part
of their education in Europe ... once they are all citizens of the Ocean
of the Free!

Think of the cross-fertilization that would result in education, art,
science, invention, business, philosophy, religion -- in being, in
doing, in living, in loving ...

Think of the basic cross-fertilization, the inter-marriage of the young
people of the European nations with each other, and of the Europeans
with North Americans that would result from the political welding of
their nations. Think of their children, who would have the advantage of
starting life with two national heritages instead of one to draw on, and
perhaps with two languages -- with keys to two great literatures
acquired the easiest way ...

Children of Franco-German or Italo-American or of other such marriages
are handicapped now with the conflict in loyalties that results from
their having to subordinate one parent's national heritage to the
other's. But the children of such marriages in an Atlantic Union would be
hurt by no such inner conflict in their formative years. Instead, they
would have the advantage of three loyalties and loves -- for the land of
their father, for the land of their mother, and for the Union of the
Free that their parents themselves had made, as fellow citizens, and
added to their children's heritage.

WHY MOVE FROM FEAR WHEN FAITH OFFERS US SO MUCH?

When one thinks creatively even a little of these and other effects that
flow from our embodiment of ourselves as sovereign citizens of
Atlantica, one can not help but believe that from this Union would soon
rise a far higher civilization than Man has yet attained, anywhere, any
time. Our machines have already outdone the seven-league boots,
Aladdin's Lamp, and other wonders of our fairy tales. In like manner the
civilization that would follow our constitution of this new Atlantis
would far surpass from every standpoint -- moral, material, artistic,
scientific, spiritual humane -- that of the fabled Atlantis which Plato
dreamed of, as a world swallowed up long before by the Atlantic -- not a
world that could ever be.

Here is something now in our grasp that should spur us on much more than
the fears and dangers that too long have been our major motive power. If
fear has made many men outdo themselves, faith and hope in something
better has led to much more prodigious feats. Not fear, but reasoned
hope led Columbus to brave the Atlantic. Not fear, but faith in
Mohammed's Paradise led the Arabs to make their obscure Mecca the Mecca
of mankind from Afghanistan to Spain in less than eighty years.

No people ever had such cause for faith and hope as have we Atlanticans
today -- or such means to turn them soon into reality. Let Mr. K get
what strength he can from his hope of "burying" us, from his faith that
our grandchildren will be Communists. We have far sounder reason to know
that we need but fulfill ourselves now, as citizens of the Union of the
Free, to assure our grandchildren -- and his -- the greatest blessings
that Freedom-and-Union have ever brought to men.

OUR FULFILLMENT AS NATIONS

Atlantic Union would also mean the highest fulfillment of the nation we
belong to, whichever one it may be. Here would be the peaceful reunion
of most of the Hellenic and Roman worlds, and of that of Charlemagne.
Here would come together again the Celts, Romans, Danes, Angles, Saxons
and Normans who mixed to make the English people. This would reunite the
Italians and French, the French and British, the British and Americans,
the Americans and Canadians.

With Atlantic Union, the British invention of representative government
would climb the highest political Everest in the range of Freedom. How
that would please Burke, Mill, Bryce! The French would win for their
Revolution's trinity -- Libert, Egalit, Fraternit -- more than
Napoleon dreamed of winning, and win it without a battle, with no
retreat from Moscow, no Waterloo. How this would make Jeanne d'Arc
rejoice, Voltaire and Lafayette! The Vikings would venture on their
ocean as never before. The glories of the Dutch Republic -- and the
ideals of Grotius -- would blossom anew, as would those of the Belgians
to whom Caesar paid such tribute. Here the eternal dream of the Germans
would be realized in the way that Goethe, Heine, Schiller would applaud.
Here would be restored the Rule of Law that Italy first gave the West;
here would be far more than Columbus dreamed of in Genoa. Here too would
be the apogee of ancient Athens and of modern Ankara. By Atlantic Union,
Canada would bring its British fatherland and French motherland to live
in Union as their children do in Ottawa. And here the greatest of
American inventions -- Federal Union -- would come to its finest flower
... in the peaceful, reasoned way the seed was created by Franklin,
Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Mason.

Every nation has developed a certain character, personality and genius
of its own. Would not those of every Atlantic people be best fulfilled
by a Federation of the Free that guaranteed to each nation its own
independence in everything that was purely national, and yet gave it a
better means of spreading its virtues to other nations, and replacing
its vices with the virtues it could gain from them? Federation would
give each nation possibilities it could not otherwise have to make
experiments in the political, economic, social and other fields that
interest it most, and by the success of its pilot plant lead the rest of
the Union to follow it. The world's first experiment with woman suffrage
was made in the sparsely peopled frontier state of Wyoming. From there
it spread from state to state through the American Union, and also from
nation to nation, around the world. This is but a hint of the
innovations whose inauguration and whose spread (if successful) would
both be fostered in all the nations an Atlantic Union federated. Their
greater diversity would assure an even wider range of fruitful
experiment than the fifty pilot plants have already provided the fifty
United States.

OUR FULFILLMENT AS PERSONS

Above all we are each individuals. In all our other embodiments we are
individual. Unions and nations and tribes can divide. Even the closest
"plural" person -- marriage based on mutual love -- can be divided by
death, or divorce. But though each of us feels often of two minds, of
two hearts, none of us can divide himself and live. Each remains
individual, the basic and supreme flesh-blood-and-soul reality in human
life. No man can escape himself, each woman must always live with
herself. And only you can fulfill yourself.

Consider for a moment how Atlantic Union would help its citizens to
fulfill themselves better than they can now. One illustration may serve
to stimulate the reader to paint more of this picture for himself.

In every field of life, Atlantic Union would open a much higher
possibility of fulfillment to every citizen who is specially gifted or
deeply interested in that particular field. Take statesmanship, as a
typical example. In any Atlantic democracy now, any citizen, however
small the town or humble the family he was born in, can hope to rise to
the higher levels of government in his nation -- but no higher.

A Norwegian may be much more gifted as a statesman than the occupant of
Downing Street or the White House, but the highest development of his
gifts that he can hope for now is to be Prime Minister of some three
million Norwegians. In an Atlantic Union he could become the Chief
Executive of 471 million people. Such a Union would permit a gifted
Senator from Greece to gain by sheer ability the influential role as
regards Atlantic policy that young Senator Frank Church has already won
in the United States Senate although he represents one of the least
populous states, Idaho. Through an Atlantic Union a gifted Dutchman can
gain the decisive power over Atlantic foreign policy that another
Senator from Idaho, William Borah, once wielded over Washington's.
Through Atlantic Union the gifted son of an obscure family in a
forgotten trading post on Hudson Bay can have an even vaster opportunity
than the American Union gave to a rail-splitter in a frontier village in
Illinois -- and, if he has the stuff in him, he can serve freedom
everywhere as nobly as did Lincoln.

FROM "VILLAGE HAMPDENS" TO ATLANTIC CHURCHILLS

Now look at the other side of this picture. All the citizens of New
Salem, and of Illinois, and of the United States, and all men everywhere
who prize liberty-and-union, gained immensely from the fact that Lincoln
was not limited to a sovereign city but could use his great gifts on a
vaster stage. Atlantic Union gives us a still greater possibility of
freeing the "man in a hundred million" -- the Lincoln of tomorrow -- to
fulfill himself by serving individual liberty on the scale his gifts
require, meeting the higher challenge that he was born to meet ... and
cannot possibly meet in any Republic smaller than the Union of the Free.

Had Churchill or de Gaulle been born in an earlier century, their great
potentialities would have limited them to some petty kingdom, long since
forgotten. They could have been those "village Hampdens" whom Gray
lamented in his Elegy:

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land ...
Their lot forbade ...

Because village kingdoms had already been painfully united into the
British and French nations when Churchill and de Gaulle were born, they
had a greater state to inspire them, a greater stage on which to develop
their gifts, a greater service they could perform for a greater number
of fellow citizens. If we -- and they -- now make the most of the
opportunity they helped preserve for the free, England's next Churchill
and France's next de Gaulle will be born citizens of Atlantica, too.
They will start with a greater country to inspire and enable them to
reach a higher plane of patriotism, and a deeper philosophy of
freedom-and-union ... and widen further man's vast future.

Consider the possibilities of self-fulfillment resulting from the
billions of dollars that Union would save on defense and the even huger
amounts it would add to income by the economies of mass production on a
scale nearly three times greater than that of the United States,
unhampered by nationalism's costly barriers to business. Part of the
saving on defense would go to the citizen in lower taxes, and he would
reap nearly all the benefit from the increased prosperity. The taxpayers
in each nation could spend those billions then on educating better their
children -- and themselves -- and on health, travel, the arts ... and on
helping their fellow man.

Nearly every citizen has at least one or two ideas for improving life
that are dear to him or her. It may be a mechanical invention, one of
the arts, a new process in manufacturing, a teaching program, a
scientific theory, a spiritual or philosophic concept, or something else
whose possibilities appeal to him. It may be one of the innumerable
"good causes" that lead free people to join this or that private
association, whose purpose somehow attracts them personally, so much
more than others do, that they lie awake at night thinking how to help
it get the funds, and members, and attention it needs.

There are innumerable foxholes in the fight against ignorance, poverty
and disease and for the ever greater growth of body, mind and spirit.
Freedom permits, and expects, every sovereign citizen to volunteer to
fill whatever foxhole is most important to him. Since human beings are
so richly diversified, the more freedom they have to choose the way they
would fulfill themselves, the surer we can be that those myriad foxholes
will be filled always by all the men and women who can best be depended
on to hold and advance that sector. To increase the private income each
of them has at his or her disposal is to permit each to develop his
personality the more. Atlantic Union would help in this way, too.

It would also help by providing greater private funds on which colleges,
churches, and private associations could draw in their efforts to raise
funds to fight cancer or juvenile delinquency, to finance scholarships
or missionaries, to exchange students or art exhibits, to help the blind
child overcome his handicap and the budding genius to develop his
potentialities, to advance peace, knowledge, wisdom, virtue, freedom.
There are countless things that need doing, and that are struggling now
for funds and volunteer workers. But the achievement of none of them
would do half as much as would the achievement of Atlantic Union to help
advance all the other causes that deserve support. Atlantic Union would
free more money, more volunteers and more time, and would distribute
these more effectively among all the foxholes of civilization, than
would any other single change that is within the reach of the people of
Atlantica today.

____

1. Acton, Historical Essays and Studies, 1908, p. 127.

2. From a chapter in his book published in the September, 1960, Freedom
& Union.
