AMERICA SECOND?
Mayer, Milton
America Second? By MILTON MAYER THERE is only one way to make peace and keep it, and that way is government. Everyone knows this simple, uninteresting fact. Everyone has always known it; no...
...The Force Of Law Why doesn't this happen every time two citizens of the United States get into a dispute...
...Adler Guesses 500 Years So, too, in the 1860's, the citizens of the Southern states had to put their beloved little commonwealths second to the government of the union...
...Not at all...
...The political development of the world has not even begun to approach that stage...
...If I am a gentleman, I abide by the award...
...They refused to...
...They rebelled...
...Such a peace is not a peace at all, but a state of suspended hostilities...
...Only their willingness to do so, and they did it with great anguish, made our union, and our peace in it, possible...
...What is the law...
...And that is the way the peace must be made and kept in the One World that rises before our eyes...
...We're getting warmer...
...Are we ready to put America second, to be citizens of the world instead of the United States...
...But these Ful-bright-Connally Resolutions, these Papal Bulls, and the brands of bull emanating from Teheran, London, New York, and Washington are all designed to convince us that a magic formula can be imposed upon the unsolved problems of mankind, like a facade in front of a tenement with peace on earth as the result...
...They are talking through their hats...
...Is it the fear of the courts that keeps the peace...
...He guesses, looking back over history and its accelerating progress, that if we keep our eye on the distant goal and let nothing interfere with our pursuit of it, we may achieve this single, preliminary condition of peace in 500 years...
...Mortimer J. Adler, the popular philosopher, has tackled this question in a book coming out next month under the title of How to Think about War and Peace...
...But the Roosevelts, Churchills, Piuses, Willkies, Lippmanns, Culbertsons, and Streits can not wait that long...
...How else can we make and keep true peace...
...So, too, in the 1790's, the citizens of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and New York, had to agree to put their beloved sovereign states second to the federal government over all of them...
...The Russians and Chinese and Japs and Germans will all have to put their nations and empires second, as will we, to the sovereign rule that alone will keep the peace among them...
...If two of us disagree, the law decides between us...
...The court may be a toothless old man who would be a pushover for a gymnasium graduate like me...
...None of us rules another...
...How, except by going to war, can two or more sovereign nations settle a dispute on which they can not reach agreement...
...But strange to say, this simple, uninteresting fact has escaped the Roosevelts, Churchills, Piuses, Willkies, Lippmanns, Culbertsons, Streits, and all the other statesmen who have charged themselves with making and keeping the peace of the world...
...They talk about power combinations between England and America (Dewey) or among England, America, Russia, and maybe China (Lippmann), or among the "peace-loving nations" (Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang, and Stalin, and don't mention India, Egypt, Poland, the Baltie states, or Porto Rico...
...The rebellion was crushed, and they re-entered the union on an equal basis with their sister states, all of them second to the sovereignty of the union...
...The English will have to put England second...
...They are not talking about peace...
...And so the law, which is the government stripped of its functionaries and factotums, rules us all...
...They talk about a world court, as if a court without the authority of law ever succeeded in enforcing a decision...
...And yet it is the only way to make and keep the peace, and there is no other...
...It is nonsense to think of it as possible now...
...They are talking about new Congresses of Vienna, new Quadruple Alliances, new Ententes Cordiales, new Holy Alliances...
...But I am not a gentleman, so I repair to the gymnasium, and stay there until I am big enough to clean up on you and the committee, or league, or both...
...But it is the law that makes the peace possible at all...
...And as long as there are two (or more) sovereign nations in one geographical area, peace can be made and kept only at the pleasure of the stronger nation or nations...
...Are the Russians, the Chinese, the French, the Dutch, or the Bulgarians...
...Is it the fear of the police that keeps the peace...
...That is the way the peace is made and kept in any community...
...Peace, such as you and I know in Rochester, Des Moines, or Elk City, is more "or less stable...
...This means that before we can make or keep the peace, we Americans will have to join the yet-to-be-born America Second Committee...
...One Law For One World As long as there are two (or more) sovereign men in one geographical area, peace can be made and kept only at the pleasure of the stronger of them...
...Others are trying to kid themselves and us both...
...Such a peace has never lasted and never will...
...Adler, though he nowhere credits me with having given him this idea, or all the other good ideas he ever had, does the job up brown...
...Since they know we are not ready to take the single, preliminary step to peace, they duck it and try to tell us that this or that arrangement of sovereign nations, some of them just, some of them unjust, and all of them knowing no master but force, will make and keep the peace of the world...
...no community, however primitive, has ever tried to make peace and keep it any other way...
...I may give in because you are bigger than 1 am, but my surrender does not settle the dispute, because I proceed at once to the corner gymnasium and stay there until I am bigger than you are...
...The law...
...Our mission to the world is to show the world how peace can be made and kept...
...To whom or what can they appeal for judgment except the force of arms...
...Our mission to the world is to make the peace within the United States more stable by making it more just, and, beyond that, to offer the underprivileged of the earth, including the victims of the "peace-loving nations," all they need of our substance and our support...
...The committee, or league, which we agree upon awards the decision to you...
...You and I get into a dispute...
...Peace will never be made or kept the easy way...
...America's Mission Some of these are trying to kid us...
...Not at all...
...Observe the fact that each of us, in making this agreement, is still his own master: we can not be compelled to mediate or arbitrate...
...Are the British ready to put Britain second...
...World peace will be made and kept, if at all, the hard way, just as peace in the United States has been made and kept...
...Our mission to the world is not to let justice, the anchor of peace, slip away in America while we underwrite the depredations, past, present, and future, of our "peace-loving" allies...
...Or, perhaps, we may, by our own free will, agree to mediation or arbitration...
...In a world of sovereign nations, no other appeal is possible...
...What is it that makes and keeps the peace...
...If what I am saying makes sense so far, then the only way to make and keep the peace in One World is to abolish every sovereign nation on earth and put the people of the One World under one law...
...You and I live in a community under government...
...Apart from this one way, there i^ only the possibility of armed truces, leagues, confederacies, balances of power, hegemonies, empires—and war...
...But the statesmen, the popes, and the pamphleteers who have charged themselves with making and keeping the peace of this One World refuse to face this most elementary of all political facts...
...We can not settle the dispute...
...The law is the written will of all the people in a community, binding, with all the force of the community, upon every member of the community...
...I can go to the gymnasium and round up a crowd of thugs and clean up on the police...
...Of course not...
...They talk about an international police force, as if a policeman without the authority of law ever succeeded in making and keeping the peace...
...Since any law worthy of the name is the will of all as well as the master of all, the law must be just, or even the law will fail to keep the peace...
...Only wars are made the easy way...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 4
