HOW CAN WE BUILD A PEACEFUL WORLD?
Barnes, Harry Elmer
How Can We Build A Peaceful World? By HARRY ELMER BARNES NO PHASE of the institutional trends during the fourth world-revolution is more uncertain than the future of international relations and...
...This is not only a sane proposal but also one which appears most in harmony with the probable trends in international readjustments under the fourth world-revolution...
...Charles A. Lindbergh, never implied at any time a bigoted, narrow-minded, or short-sighted withdrawal from constructive participation in world affairs...
...I elaborated this in my article in The Progressive of Jan...
...I may have more to say about regionalism in later articles in The Progressive...
...Mortimer J. Adler in his jolting article on "The Fetish of Internationalism," in Common Sense, January, 1944...
...The outcome, of course, will have an important effect upon international trends in the immediate future, but it will be secondary to the larger problems of bringing war under public control and lessening its ravages...
...A careful study made of this subject in 1943 revealed the fact that there were no less than 400 separate organizations then devoted to working out plans for the reorganization of the world after the war...
...Many believe, and Mr...
...All in all, we may fairly say that the regional federation of the countries of the world—Regionalism— using federation as its technique, seems to be the one common denominator among the more forward-looking plans for ultimate world organization...
...But humanity has been notoriously incapable of learning any lessons from previous wars...
...Churchill and Roosevelt, have given far less attention to the lessons of the past, the issues of the war, and plans for postwar reconstruction than did the leaders of the Allies in the first World War, such as Wood-row Wilson and Sir Edward Grey...
...To put it bluntly, the current internationalism is only a glorified and dishonest rationalization of personal political ambition, war-mongering, revengeful passion, or imperialistic pride and greed...
...The only official program of the United Nations is the Atlantic Charter, a loose, weak, and inadequate document, which looks toward the past rather than the future, and has been repudiated in some of its nioit vital points by its co-authors...
...Further, it is obvious that, if moderate plans of world organization have failed, we cannot expect more ambitious and extreme plans to succeed, so long as the same conditions remain that wrecked the more modest experiments...
...The active international army would be drawn solely from the smaller nations...
...Even a casual glance at these is enough to make it clear that many, if not most, of the now ardent world-government fanatics would drop their plan like a hot potato and take to the woods in stark terror, if they actually knew what a world government would be like...
...Lynn Thorndike in the Political Science Quarterly, March 1942, and by Mr...
...as soon as the war is over...
...It means, in actual practice, that the United States must intrude itself into every war of any consequence on the planet, irrespective of the merits of the struggle^-and especially if England is involved and needs our help...
...They would limit armed forces at home to those necessary for policing purposes and would have an international army, supported by a world federation, to police the world and curb aggressors...
...Both of them envisage a world organization, founded on these regions, to prevent war...
...To be realistic, internationalism, as expounded and practiced by its leading apostles since 1937, has no inherent relationship whatever to international perspective and statesmanship or world-planning...
...As a conclusion, not only to this article, but also to the whole series, we may well take to heart Fred Ro-dell's profound observation, earlier set forth in The Progressive, namely, that social realities are made by men and not by laws...
...This might be followed by a Pan-Asiatic Union, a Pan-European Union, and so on...
...29, 1916, and put an end to the promising negotiations for peace then in progress...
...Other programs have been offered, designed to give the United States supremacy in the postwar world...
...Until these conditions are eliminated from the nations and regions of the world, they cannot very well be divorced from any larger international organization which seeks to eliminate warfare and promote social justice on a planetary scale...
...Isolationism simply means the conviction that we should not enter into foreign entanglements and wars unless our national safety and interests are clearly involved...
...All of which boils down to the fact that the creation of a desirable social future is, fundamentally, an educational problem...
...William Hard has well expressed this view in the lead article in the December, 1943, Reader's Digest, that the first practical step is to develop international organizations for discussion,' negotiation, and compromise, such as the Pan-American Union...
...The problems of plenty and security in the several nations of mankind cannot be ignored in any realistic planning for world organization and the furtherance of world peace...
...There can be no success with world organization until we lessen, and gradually eliminate, the causes of war—rampant nationalism, imperialism, armament competition, secret diplomacy, domestic impoverishment, racial inequalities, population pressure, and the Working Their Way Through The Electoral College like...
...The machinery for mass-slaughter and the increasingly rapid and efficient facilities for the transportation of such machinery, especially since the appearance of the great air bombers and rocket bombs, are incompatible with orderly civilization...
...Churchill's "Council of Europe" harks back to the close of the Napoleonic Wars...
...Russia has already done so, and she owes her position of world leadership today largely to this fact...
...We have already indicated the complicated and formidable problems involved in converting education from an anchor to the past into a motive power and a steering-wheel for the voyage to the future...
...Robert E. Wood, and Col...
...The first step in putting the world in order is to put our own house in order...
...This is, perhaps, the outstanding problem of the fourth world-revolution, and it may exact the supreme penalty for our failure to bring our institutions up to date and in harmony with our technology...
...Charles Austin Beard, John T. Flynn, Stuart Chase, Sen...
...In contrast to this paucity of official planning for the postwar world are the great volume and variety of unofficial proposals...
...A main reason why the League of Nations collapsed was that it was composed of countries that were thoroughly committed to the old order of exploitation and aggression...
...So long as political corruption and inefficiency and economic injustice prevail within the nations of the world, there is no hope of providing a world-order which will produce stability and fair-play...
...World Planning Begins At Home One reason for so much loose talk about world government and the glib profusion of plans for world government is that even most of those who propose such schemes have no comprehension at all of what a world government means or involves...
...The Moscow agreements and the Cairo and Teheran announcements add nothing except self-evident platitudes or intellectual and institutional antiquities...
...Culbertson's plan shows ingenuity in seeking to provide a strong international police force without at the same time making this a probable basis for international tyranny by the stronger powers...
...Roosevelt and Churchill at Casablanca, may be fairly compared to Lloyd George's famous "Knockout Victory" slogan, which he gave out to Roy Howard on Sept...
...Indeed, it may be impossible to perpetuate any form of civilization unless the ever more devastating warfare is brought under social control...
...Bankruptcy Of Official Planning It is extremely difficult at the present time to predict just how the second World War will turn out, who will be the victors, even when Hitler is defeated, or the type of peace which will be imposed...
...Thorndike proposes nine regions, and Culbertson suggests 11...
...We have devoted every facility of the most modern science and engineering to the development of better machinery for waging wars...
...We should go at least this far...
...And that was never so true of any generation as of our own...
...We are ready to kill as never before, and, if we go on killing at the rate present machinery permits, there can be only one result, namely, the ruthless extermination of much of the human race and the extinction of orderly society...
...There will be no sweeping and permanent reforms until leaders are brought forward who believe in such reforms and are willing to devote themselves earnestly to their realization...
...Its inadequacies shocked even such restrained internationalists as Ely Culbertson...
...If we are able, in the course of what remains of the organization of the world, this will surely be the most striking forward step ever taken in the political evolution of mankind...
...La Follette, Wheeler, Taft, and Aiken, Gen...
...Such is "the American Century" panorama of Mr...
...The facilities for slaughter, and the expenses connected therewith, have become too devastating to be reconciled with civilization and security...
...The Causes Of War The "Unconditional Surrender" program, adopted by Messrs...
...We must either bring them under control, or they are likely to bring civilization to an end...
...If this be true, in the above sense of these terms, then American civilization is doomed, if it has not already been fatally undermined by the globaloney virus...
...Henry Luce...
...Isolationism," as exemplified by any intelligent and dignified champion, such as Dr...
...It flopped miserably even in 1914...
...By HARRY ELMER BARNES NO PHASE of the institutional trends during the fourth world-revolution is more uncertain than the future of international relations and international organization...
...An Educational Problem We often hear it said nowadays that isolationism is dead and internationalism forever triumphant...
...Of one thing, however, we may be certain...
...We should not end our discussion of the international problem without commenting briefly upon the vastly perverted problem of internationalism versus isolationism...
...One fundamental weakness of most of the myriad plans for a new international order is that they do not reckon adequately with the causes of war or the lessons which should have been learned from past experience with international organization...
...Roosevelt's much vaunted world peace plan or blueprint for a world setup of June 10, 1944, was as disappointing as his earlier contributions to postwar planning...
...The "Culbertson Plan" is fully elaborated in his recent book, Total Peace...
...Neither regionalism nor more ambitious plans of organization will prove workable until the countries of the world have provided for just and efficient government at home and have worked out an economy which will provide security and decent living conditions for their own citizens...
...Beyond continental regionalism, the evolution of world federation is likely to be slow and gradual, if it is to have any prospect of final success...
...3, 1944...
...And leaders cannot succeed unless the masses are converted to their leadership and goals...
...Unless some method can be discovered to discourage and reduce the prevalence of warfare, there is no prospect of maintaining a high level of civilization...
...Both of these plans provide for the reorganization of the world on the basis of a number of logical regions...
...Nobody has understood this better than H. G. Wells, whose labors for a world-state have been paralleled by unceasing efforts to promote economic justice and political efficiency at home, thus making him the most realistic and useful of those who have striven to promote unity and peace among mankind...
...The best neighbor is not ordinarily regarded as the man who insists on getting into every family brawl or dogfight in the community...
...But when it comes to handling war as an institution we have advanced slightly, if at all, beyond the sentiments and attitudes of Ramses II, Ashurbanipal, and Joshua...
...It only means that isolationists still perversely insist on maintaining that George Washington was a more admirable American than Benedict Arnold, though in fairness to Arnold we should remember that he only proposed to give West Point to the British...
...In short, isolationism means isolation from other peoples' wars—not isolation from world affairs...
...If the Atlantic Charter was an anemic reminder of Wilson's Fourteen Points, the June plan was a sickly and hesitant ghost of the League of Nations...
...Whatever the intent of those who adopted the program of unconditional surrender, it serves mainly to prolong the war and to prevent the social revolutions that might actually overthrow fascism and hasten the end of hostilities...
...We may learn some lessons from the present conflict which will encourage the control and prevention of war...
...This was well pointed out by Dr...
...Even more ambitious is the Kneeland Plan, which would assure the United States real world dominion...
...To turn now to the plans for a new international order after the war, one of the most striking elements in the situation is the amazing lack of comprehensive and forward-looking international planning in official circles and the great multiplicity of unofficial plans and programs for the postwar organization of the world...
...Such organizations might well pave the way for federated regions, and the latter could prepare the world for planetary federation at a much later date...
...Moreover, its proclamation relative to the abandonment of force in world affairs would seem to be applicable only to the vanquished and not to the victors...
...Two of the most thoughtful of the plans for ultimate world organization are those set forth by Prof...
...Once regionalism becomes a practical and accepted fact, we may then lay reasonable plans for some form of world federation which will, in the distant future, have some prospect of coherence and permanency...
...Churchill and Roosevelt sold us the same old gold brick that Grey and Wilson palmed off on us in 1914-1917, without even bothering to change the wrapping paper or the label...
...Indeed, most of the prominent "isolationists" had a sounder philosophy of internationalism than the most blatant disciples of globaloney...
...This even outdoes any of the Geopolitik ambitions of Hitler and the Nazis, for there is not in Mein Kampf a single passage which specifically lays plans for any literal world dominion by Germany...
...Here he gives ten simple criteria or tests of literal world government...
...The leaders of the United Nations, at least Messrs...
...Ely Culbertson in Reader's Digest, February 1943...
...All the other United Nations may well take this admonition to heart...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 34
