GOOD RIDDANCE OF GLOBALONEY

...It must never happen again...

...Now Russia steps in as the remaining candidate to end anarchy in this area and impose unity...

...HENCE, it was not at all surprising that the announcement of the Atlantic Charter was greeted by a storm of criticism and deserved abuse by candid and informed observers...

...There is no way of knowing whether Messrs...

...that it was hopeless as a guide to the international future, and that it was ominous indeed for the human race...

...which all the peoples involved did not freely consent, or of anv obstruction of complete national self-determination was just a little too much...

...Larger states or federations must be created to reduce the causes of international friction and tariff wars...

...If we do not like this prospect, then let us propose and promote some other preferable form of unification, remembering that, if we are to be taken seriously, the alternative must have some promise of success...

...It was conceded that this all-out surrender to nationalism was a great and fatal mistake...

...It was inevitable that the hoax would be exposed at no very distant date...

...If the political ideology of that document is not blown to shreds before the Peace Conference, the third World War will not be far around the corner after the delegates leave the peace table...

...But, for the sake of argument, we will assume that they did...

...The principle of nationality is not as important as human civilization...

...Realistic liberals talked and blustered much about international anarchy, the restoration of the tribal spirit, the "Balkanizing of Europe" and the like...

...When Deacon Stalin challenged the Atlantic Charter with deed rather than pungent rhetoric, there arose a great wail of dismay and alleged disillusionment from those who were formerly most contemptuous of the Atlantic Charter and most thoroughly convinced of its wicked and retrogressive principles...

...The forceful amalgamation of any people may be bad, but it is better than the Versailles system and the lunacy of the "strange interlude" between 1919 and 1939...

...But it is astonishing to find a squeal of pain going up from hitherto realistic progressives and liberals, who have previously had rather less than any admiration for, or faith in, the Atlantic Charter...

...Germany wished to unify central and southeastern Europe under Nazfc auspices...

...This is surely too high a price to pay for pride and babble, no matter how noble in metaphysical pretense...

...We shall only weaken ourselves if, in the meantime, we jump on Russia where her position is most invulnerable and where our arguments are something worse than silly...

...If we are to have any hope of reasonably durable peace, some form of regional federal union must be found for small states, either a federal union of the lesser states or their inclusion within a regional federation dominated by some large state...

...Its principles do not measure up even to the horse-and-buggy stage of political thinking...

...And, if we do not find it incumbent upon ourselves to grant self-determination and sovereignty to the Sioux, Cherokees, Seminoles, Apaches, and Iroquois, then why do we insist upon it for the Poles, Czechs, Yugoslavs, and the Letts...

...IF the international political pattern—the child of Versailles—that blew up at the end of August, 1939, was vicious, unworkable, and provocative of carnage, why should we wish to restore it as the chief fruit of the second World War...

...The great majority of realistic students and commentators in the days after the Pact of Paris united in criticizing and decrying the Versailles settlement because it applied "without stint or limit" and indefinitely sanctified the doctrines of national self-determination and the absolute sovereignty of every little new state which sprang into being as the result of Wilsonian fantasy...

...If so, it was only a menacing vestige or revival of the doctrine of Woodrow Wilson and the Versailles system, which gave us victory without peace in 1919 and led straight to calamity 20 years later...

...Failing this, unity must be imposed from without...

...The outcry has attained its crescendo since the Yalta Conference...

...Let us not swoon in behalf of principles and practices which have already all but sounded the deathknell of civilization...

...Anglo-American opposition and Hitler's imbecilic attack on Russia prevented this...

...The number of national states was nearly doubled in Europe after the first World War...

...Perhaps we should not be surprised to find the starry-eyed, Globaloney brethren shocked by Joe Stalin's designs on the Baltic States, Finland, part of Poland, and the like, and thereupon dispatching to Uncle Joe a touching appeal to him to be a nice boy...

...One of the main arguments of the American non-interventionists after 1938 was that the defense and perpetuation of the anarchistic principle of national self-determination constituted a terribly poor cause over which to pour out our blood and treasure...

...It was alleged that it was only an incomplete, threadbare, and unimaginative reincarnation of Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points and his other ethereal international idealism...

...Now that the nrediction of such realists has been fully borne out, they seem, for some incredible reason, amazed, disillusioned, and betrayed...

...That eminent British liberal, H. N. Brailsford, wrote an excellent article in the American Mercury of July, 1940, predicting and demanding "the end of small nations...

...THE Atlantic Charter, if a reality, is one of the most dangerous and ominous documents in the whole history of international relations, and we should thank God that there was somebody around candid and powerful enough to challenge it, even if it had to be Deacon Stalin...

...When the Atlantic Charter was first announced, it was rightfully and logically greeted with a howl of derision by realists acquainted with the facts of life in the international field...

...We might rest content with registering amazement and passing the spectacle off as just another example of the curious versatility and perversity of the human mind if principles of the greatest moment for the future of human well-being were not very obviously at stake...

...I HAVE no concern about the indignation heaped on Deacon Stalin, who is quite capable of taking care of himself, but it is of the most vital importance that we shall not let ourselves get committed to repeating the very worst mistake of 1919 and succeeding years—the absurd political error that did more than anything else to bring about the second World War and would inevitably provoke a third World War...

...The time may come when the interests of the United States, and perhaps of contemporary civilization, will dictate that we should oppose the policies and moves of Soviet Russia...

...Churchill and Roosevelt meant the scraps of paper which constituted the Atlantic Charter to be taken at all literally and seriously...

...Voluntary federation of the smaller states would be preferable, if this could be carried through and made workable...

...His views were echoed in the same journal by William Henry Chamberlin, who is now one of the most vehement assailants of Stalin...

...Many who were once the most vehement in condemnation of the Atlantic Charter now rush swiftly and passionately to its defense...

...Tears shed over the demise of the Atlantic Charter are as little called for as tears shed over the early medieval heresy hunts, the Crusades, the Congress of Vienna or the political policies of Metternich...

...To assert that a great Global War was being fought without any expectation of aggrandizement on the part of the victors, or of any territorial changes to...

...Now comes "the one for Ripley...

...If we sanction national self-determination and independent sovereignty for every little "two-by-four" quasi-tribe in Europe and elsewhere, we can expect wars in endless and frequent succession and the extinction of orderly civilization...