Year XXXIII, 1991, Number 1 - Page 28
The World Federalist Movements from 1945 to 1954 and European Integration
JEAN-FRANCIS BILLION
The decade from 1945 to 1954 is fundamental for the study of World federalism. This was its golden period, the decade which saw the popular and spectacular activities of Garry Davis; it likewise saw the development, but also the failure, of the two strategies which had received the most numerous and militant support: that, first of all, of the Peoples’ World Convention (PWC), and, subsequently, that of reforming the UN Charter. The serious crisis which hit the world federalist movement in 1955 undermined numerous organizations and publications. This period began with the end of the Second World War, with the first use of atomic weapons, with the creation of the UN in June 1945 and with the birth of the World Movement for World Federal Government (WMWFG), the most important of the groups dealt with in this paper. There were developments on the international front that were unfavourable to world federalist theories, with the birth of the cold war and with the Korean war. To draw a parallel with European integration – which represents the central theme of these pages – it may be pointed out that this same period, for European federalists, was that from the creation in 1946 of the European Union of Federalists (UEF) to the failure of the battle for the European Defence Community (EDC), and consequently to the withdrawal of the plan for a European Political Community which had been linked to it on the initiative of Altiero Spinelli. The attitude of World federalists with regard to federal regional integration in general, and in particular to European integration – the first example of it – will thus be the central argument of this paper; however it is first worth recalling who were this first generation of World federalists, and what were their main priorities and motivation.
Tom O. Griessemer was an exile from Nazi Germany, who along with Clarence Streit[1] was one of the founders of the Federal Union in the USA in 1939, before becoming the first secretary general of the WMWFG and setting up World Government News, one of the most important American world federalist journals of the era. He expressed himself in these terms: “A fundamental difference, however, separates all other peace movements from us World federalists: their reasoning is speculative, ours is empiric. They believe that if more people refuse to serve in armies, or if more people were better Christians, or had less children, etc., there would be no more wars. We World federalists, on the other hand, know that peace in any human community is the result of justice, that justice requires law and law government. We know this because we have seen it tested daily and proved daily all around us”.[2]
In analysing this first period in the history of organized World federalism, Rolf P. Haegler writes: “The sense of urgency felt by some, of a last chance when faced with the threat of nuclear destruction; the faith of others in the possibility of rapid and definitive successes; these aroused a great enthusiasm, which is characteristic of the first generation of World federalists”; but he also says: “The drawbacks of this situation were not slow in making themselves felt: when it went out of fashion, for many the initial enthusiasm died”.[3]
The gestation period of World federalism.
Following the First World War, there began to develop isolated attempts at European and World federalism. From the very beginning the League of Nations, which was set up on the return of peace, was denounced as confederal and powerless by its very nature. In Germany, from 1914, the group Neues Vaterland adopted the objective of promoting all initiatives likely to influence politically the countries of Europe, basing its ideas on the “civilized notion of peaceful competition and supranational unification”. In 1910, in the United States, the New York Peace Society founded a World federation Committee, which was to become autonomous in 1912, under the name World Federation League. Still in the United States, the first parliamentary initiatives for the creation of a World federation were made first by Massachusetts and later by the House of Representatives, in 1915 and 1916 respectively, while various pacifist and feminist associations in turn adopted world federalist slogans. In Asia, the Rajah Mahandra Pratap published in 1938 the journal World State and created numerous World federation Centers in an area which extended as far as Japan; he was in contact with the Scandinavian World federalists who organized in Sweden the first Internordic Meeting on World federation towards the end of the thirties. In Great Britain, even before the Federal Union, various associations developed such as the Union for Democratic Control, then in 1932 the New Commonwealth Society. In Switzerland, the Mouvement populaire suisse en faveur d’une Fédération des peuples was founded in Geneva in 1940; it was represented by Max Habricht, jurist and key figure in World federalism in Luxembourg and later in Montreux, in 1946 and 1947. Finally, to return to the United States from 1924 onwards Rosika Schwimmer and Lola Maverick Lloyd, feminist and pacifist activists during the Great War, published Chaos, War or a New World Order and in it developed their idea of the PWC for the first time, before launching the Campaign for World Government in Chicago in 1937.[4] This happened a year before Streit published Union Now and before three associations were founded in Britain, the United States and New Zealand, independent of each other but bearing the same name: Federal Union.
From war to the creation of the WMWFG.
In fact, when Derek Rawnsley, Charles Kimber and Patrick Ransome created the Federal Union in England, 1938, they knew nothing of Union Now, the publication of which came to them as a surprise, but they already advocated the two levels of European and World federation. Starting from 1939, they began publishing their journal Federal News, and relations developed between the federalists of Canada, Eire, Switzerland, the United States, France, Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa, India and Argentina. In 1942, despite the war, the European Committee of Federal Union was constituted, with representatives in London from fourteen different nationalities.
At the same time, in continental Europe, contacts developed in Geneva in 1944, then in Paris and in Hertenstein in 1946, between federalist cells within the Resistance, which were to lead to the creation of the UEF.
In the United States, in February 1947, some months before the Congress of Montreux, the chief federalist organizations set up the Conference of Asheville, in North Carolina, to create the United World federalists. They were to become the most important World federalist group in the USA, with eighteen thousand members (in mid 1947), meeting in two hundred local groups spread throughout thirty-three American states. Debate centred on the strategy to follow for the creation of a World federation. From the very beginning, all delegates had adopted a profession of faith which, on questions of principle, laid down the following: “We believe that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of justice, of law, of order – in short, of government; that world peace can be created and maintained only under world law, universal and strong enough to prevent armed conflicts between nations”.[5] Phillips Ruop testified to the liveliness of debate when, in February 1948, he wrote in Common Cause that “most delegates had come to distant Asheville unaware of the basic differences among them concerning techniques of promoting the World Government” but that “they were caught between two vocal minorities: those who wanted the World’s Peoples Convention and those who wanted to concentrate on amendment of the Charter of the United Nations”. Ota Adler, a member of the Federal Union, wrote in Federal News, in May 1947, after his return to England, that “the majority of American Federalists believe in using the United Nations Organization ... A minority, however, mostly younger people, had more revolutionary ideas” and wanted to by-pass national governments, which were suspected of wanting to preserve their independence and sovereignty.
The strategic alternative between the constituent method which aimed to by-pass nation-states and to ignore the UN, and that which preferred the reform of the San Francisco Charter, was, like the contrast between regional federalists and World federalists, to remain at the centre of world federalist debate right up to the mid-fifties. In world federalist circles, there were critics of the non-democratic nature and of the ineffectuality and uselessness of the UN from the very beginnings of the international association. Rosika Schwimmer and Lola Maverick Lloyd had even cherished the hope of organizing a Conference of Peoples alongside the official meetings of San Francisco; they were obliged to give this up for lack of financial means, but some representatives of the Campaign for World Government were nevertheless present to illustrate “the federalist alternative” to the national delegates. In Europe the European Committee of Federal Union had, already in the autumn of 1945, called in a memorandum for “direct election of the UN General Assembly so as to be able to control a Security Council which would have atomic weapons at its disposal”.
Jean Larmeroux, the first elected president of the WMWFG and president of the Académie internationale des Sciences politiques, making a comparison with the League of Nations, wrote about the UN that “there too sovereign states are gathered together. There too weapons belong to individual member states of the organization. There too committees of experts and security council meetings are necessary in order for the aggressor to be designated as such. There too, a complete absence of uniform plans is the rule. There too, the veto of one can stop the good intentions of the others. There too, failure is already guaranteed”.[6]
While the Conference of Asheville had been mainly occupied with the dilemma between the PWC and strengthening the power of the UN, the 1946 Conference of Luxembourg took as its main theme the opposition between world and regional federation. Federal Union, at the end of hostilities, called a General Assembly of European and world federalist groups, whose general orientation had been formed many years before by its European committee. Yet we have seen that even before this, there had been other federalist meetings more specifically European, in particular that of Hertenstein in September 1946. In the absence of Federal Union, which could not be contacted, some of the more important European groups had established the principle that European Union is an “essential component of true World union” and a stage towards “the World Community of Peoples”. Despite this, the Europeans tended to give priority to European federation over World federation. From 1943, for example, Libération, one of the main French newspapers of the Resistance, wrote that “abolition of war could not be achieved all at once on a world scale ... One solution consists of forming unions or federations which would allow states with close territorial or cultural ties to abolish their currency, customs and defence barriers and to manage their resources in common”. In Paris, in June 1946, in Fédération, Vital-Mareile declared that European federation was necessary to prepare for World federation. In Britain too, friction had appeared within Federal Union between European and World federalists. Frances L. Josephy, who from 1941 to 1945 had replaced R. Mackay in the Presidency of the Executive Bureau of the organization, was very favourable to the European option, and had caused the resignation of other members of this organization, when she proposed in September 1944 a memorandum which illustrated the choice facing federalists: Federal Union “can say that because World federation is not practicable at the end of this war, Federal Union has no political function and must become a purely educational organization” or accept that “twice in 25 years a war has broken out in Europe; Europe is at a point of development at which its people can elect a federal Parliament; therefore ... the immediate job of Federal Union must be to press with every means in its power for inclusion in the postwar settlement of a provision setting up a European Federation, open to accession by other nations, as the most urgent step to World federation”.
Thus the foundations were laid for the incomprehension and controversy that divided the majority of American federalists from the Europeans at Luxembourg and subsequently, even if to a lesser degree, at Montreux. After long procedural debates a summary of the meeting of Hertenstein and its conclusions was distributed to participants, and then the heart of the question was tackled, while F. L. Josephy proposed a motion, called the twin aims, which committed federalists to fight at the same time for the transformation of the UN into a Federal World Government, and for the creation of a regional government in Europe which would take the form of a democratic European federation.
In the aftermath of the Conference the American delegates and some European delegates publicly declared their opposition to the very principle of regional federations, or at least stated – while not opposing the creation of a European federation, if this was the will of the people of Europe – that this point was not their concern. Adopting a less hard-line attitude than that of F. L. Josephy, Umberto Campagnolo, the then secretary-general of the Italian MFE, voiced to Congress, and subsequently in L’Unità Europea, the doubts that World federation awakened in him, while André Voisin and a certain number of French delegates insisted on integral federalism.[7] After Josephy had repeated and made explicit her intentions, it was decided that “a World organization should be set up, and within this organization a section for European federation and within that a section for federation within countries.”
After Georgia Lloyd, and later Henry Usborne, British Labour parliamentarian, had launched the idea of the World Constitutional Convention and expounded a petition with this aim,[8] the three session chairmen were able to draw up and have unanimously adopted the Declaration of Luxembourg which stated: “We Federalists from all parts of the world ... have decided to and do now bring into being an International Association uniting all organizations which seek the creation of a World Federal Government”, and made this concession: “Many of us advocate as a step to this end, the formation of Regional Federal Unions, and in particular the United States of Europe”. The preparatory conference of Montreux was in this way able to begin on the basis of the decision to create, in parallel, the WMWFG and the UEF, and to designate interim leaders of the two associations.
Tom O. Griessemer, secretary of the WMWFG, was called on to prepare the first Congress of the organization, which encompassed twenty associations from eleven countries, while the UEF was born in Paris in the offices of Fédération in December 1946, after the definitive agreements taken at Basel some days before, on the fringes of the Congress of the Swiss Europa-Union.
Montreux saw a clear reconfirmation of the validity of regional federalism as a criterion for coming closer to World Government, even if on certain conditions. This is testified to by the following passage in the Declaration adopted at the Congress: “We consider that integration of activities at regional and functional levels is consistent with the true federal approach. The formation of regional federations – insofar as they do not become an end in themselves or run the risk of crystallising into blocs – can and should contribute to the effective functioning of World Federal Government”. When he analysed the Congress of Montreux, Walter Lipgens was thus able to say that it had achieved significant results, that the Europeans recognized – as UEF was to do explicitly later on – that World federation was the final objective, and that the non-Europeans accepted the idea of regional federation as an intermediate stage; he also wrote that in contrast to what had happened at Luxembourg, the two groups had established a lasting agreement and that the European federalists had clearly taken on a pre-eminent role. Walter Lipgens went on to say that at Montreux, 50 per cent of the 31 members elected to the Council of the WMWFG were part of the Federal Committee of the UEF, as were six of the nine members of the Executive Committee; this is confirmed much less enthusiastically by Edith Wynner, who wrote in a letter to Rosika Schwimmer on 27 August 1947: “The facts are that the European Federationnists are in control of our Council and for all practical purposes of our Executive Committee”, while Francis Gerard, another office-bearer of the WMWFG, limited himself to commenting in his contribution to Basis of Federalism that at Montreux the UEF had elected to its directive bodies a certain number of World federalists. Although, as Lipgens recalls, this relationship was not destined to be repeated in subsequent Congresses, after Montreux “there was no longer rivalry between the two organizations”.[9]
The other themes dealt with at Montreux – on the one hand PWC or reform of the UN, on the other minimalism or maximalism and federal or confederal structures of the Universal Movement – created divisions between World federalists in the course of the ten years we are considering. After Asheville, the great majority of American federalists were in favour of reforming the UN Charter; at Montreux they were surprised by the opposition that they met with from many Europeans (above all the British), who were advocates of the constituent method.
For his part, Henry Usborne, in contact with the Americans in charge of the Campaign for World Government, after his election to the British Parliament, had created the Parliamentary Group for World Government, which, in the summer of 1947, had adopted a Plan in Outline for World Government by 1955, in which provision was made for a constituent assembly of nations[10] to meet at Geneva in the autumn of 1950 to draw up a world constitution. Leading figures had declared themselves in favour of the Usborne Plan: in particular, in the United States, Albert Einstein and together with him the prestigious Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, which constituted important moral support.[11] The position of the supporters of UN reform, especially the Americans, was summed up by Cord Meyer Jr.,[12] first president of the UWF, in a chapter entitled “United Nations Reform”, in the collective work on World federalism published by Norman J. Hart some months later on behalf of the Young World Federalists (association of young World federalists, later known under different names, such as World Student Federalists - WSF – and World Federalist Youth - WFY).
In the declaration of Montreux, the WMWFG had in the end adopted both strategic approaches: “We recommend the following lines of action: 1) The mobilization of the peoples of the world to bring pressure on their governments and legislative assemblies to transform the United Nations Organization into World Federal Government by increasing its authority and resources, and by amending its Charter; 2) Unofficial and concerted action: in particular the preparation of a World Constituent Assembly ... This Assembly, set up in collaboration with organized international groups, shall meet not later than 1950 for the purpose of drawing up a constitution for the World Federal Government”. Rolf P. Haegler notes in any case that, until the failure of the plan for the PWC to meet at Geneva, “all World federalist groups, in the first years of life, worked with ardour for the realization of the People’s Constituent Assembly”.[13]
The third great theme of debate and conflict at Montreux concerned the power of the future World Government. World federalists were divided into two main streams: minimalists who wanted to limit the World Government to a peace-keeping role in order to make it acceptable to the greatest possible number of countries, in particular the Soviet Union; and maximalists, convinced that peace and justice went together, that the one could not be achieved in a real and lasting way without the other, and that World Government must therefore be given very extensive powers. Again, the dividing line was the Atlantic Ocean, with the American delegates speaking of World Government “limited” above all to the control of atomic energy and weapons of mass destruction, while the European delegates wanted it to be able to prevent not only war – that went without saying – but also economic catastrophe. This debate between minimalists and maximalists was destined to continue for a long time within the World federalist movement, and two examples of the subjects under discussion are found in the Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution, drawn up by the Chicago Committee at the beginning of the fifties, of which we shall say more later, and the book World Peace through World Law by Grenville Clark and Louis B. Sohn, published at the end of the same decade.[14]
The final theme dealt with at Montreux was that of the internal organization of the movement: should the federalists be “federalised”, as the Dutch and Scandinavians wished, or should each national movement preserve a very large degree of autonomy within the WMWFG?
The Golden Period of World federalism.
After Montreux, the WMWFG thus had a legal existence, even though there were still many small collateral groups, whose actions it did not always manage to co-ordinate. Its office-bearers dedicated themselves to structuring and developing it where it did not yet exist; to this end contacts were made during the journeys of Abbé Pierre, parliamentarian and hero of the French Resistance, and of Edouard Clark, American federalist, in Czechoslovakia, the Middle East, the Far East, and in the Indian sub-continent. Thus, at its second Congress, in Luxembourg, in 1948, the WMWFG consisted of 250,000 members of nineteen nationalities, coming from thirty-nine full-member organizations and eleven affiliated ones. Despite all its efforts it nevertheless remained confined to the western hemisphere and, as Giuseppe A. Borgese, secretary of the Chicago Committee, noted: “the World federalist movement was still a Eur-American or Amer-European enterprise, strikingly occidental and white”.
At the University of Chicago the Committee of Chicago had been created; for about four years it published the newspaper of political and cultural comment Common Cause, and after many years of work brought out its Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution. The preamble of the Draft World Constitution was adopted by the Congress of Luxembourg of 1948, which also elected a constitutional committee, which included Alexandre Marc and Elisabeth Mann Borgese, younger daughter of Thomas Mann and wife of Giuseppe, both very active in the World federalist movement.[15]
As regards the debate on regional federation and/or World federation, the Chicago Committee pronounced itself in its draft constitution in favour of a regional subdivision of World federation in nine large intermediate regions, one of which included Western Europe.
The Congress of Luxembourg, which brought together about three hundred and fifty participants from twenty-two countries, had in turn to affirm the validity of the regional federations in its final declaration, but still without strongly committing itself to concrete action in this direction, specifying that “integration at regional levels can be an approach to World Federal Government. The formation of regional federations may well hasten the establishment of World Federal Government provided: a) that they do not become ends in themselves; b) that they may be expected to diminish existing tensions and the existing disparity between great and small nations; and c) that they remain sub-ordinate to the over-riding objective of establishing World Federal Government. It should, however, be emphasized that regional federations cannot of themselves solve the problem of achieving enduring peace”.[16]
The World federalists, just as they were able to accept and use, on certain conditions, regional (or continental) federalism, behaved in the same way with the functionalism that at Luxembourg was considered a means to the end of World federation.
It was a question of creating organisms above the national level, limited to this or that problem or particular area of intervention, like FAO, the UN body specialized in the area of food, whose founder had been Lord Boyd Orr, second president of the WMWFG. Abbé Pierre, in a press conference held in Paris in 1967, later summed up this orientation as follows: “The beginning of the post-war period was for the growing World federalism the era” of the jurists, of those who believed with astounding optimism that World Government would happen overnight, and who dedicated all their efforts to drawing up the best possible constitution ... Lord Boyd Orr then had the idea of launching what was called functionalism. He more or less said: ‘Let the jurists carry on with their excellent work ... ; in the meantime, we shall develop the ministries of this government which does not exist, in other words we shall make FAO, UNESCO, UNICEF, and WHO function as fully and effectively as possible. Let the function create the organ.’”[17]
Emery Reves, who had not been able to attend at Montreux, but who, in his book Anatomy of Peace, remained one of the spiritual fathers of the movement,[18] made a speech in which he repeatedly declared himself in favour of a federal structure of the Universal Movement, of an evolutionary nature of the process which would lead to World Government, and of the fact that this historical process should begin with a federation of Western Europe. In this important speech Reves also tackled the other points which divided the movement: minimalism or maximalism, Constituent Assembly or reform of the UN.
The Congress of Luxembourg, which created a special committee to co-ordinate action promoting the PWC, also stressed its support for the reform of the UN, and adopted a third approach, on the proposal of Jean Larmeroux, called the “parliamentary” approach. The first steps of this third strategy, which was intended to meet the difficulties of practicality and programming encountered in the constituent method, dated from February 1948 at a WMWFG executive committee meeting and had met with opposition among a few supporters of the Usborne Plan.
The strategy was to use parliamentary groups created in Great Britain, France, Holland, Italy and Luxembourg, as a basis to organize a world convention of parliamentarians; its task would be to draw up the world constitution. Jean Larmeroux and other leading federalists were in fact well aware of the difficulty which they would have in holding elections in time for delegates of the PWC and in fact, as Tom O. Griessemer said at Luxembourg: “A Peoples’s Constituent Assembly, if it succeeds, will not be the beginning of World Government. If it fails, it can set back our work by years, and perhaps decades”.[19]
The new approach was divided into five stages: “1) upon the initiative of individuals in the existing Parliamentary groups, an official meeting of delegates from every Parliament in the world in a World Convention. In the course of this meeting, vote on a motion, the text of which each delegate promises to bring up for consideration in his own parliament, and in which the principle of an official World Constituent Assembly is decided; 2) vote on this motion by each Parliament. When the number of Parliaments shall reach ten, a convoking, by the governments of these ten countries, of an Official World Constituent Assembly of all the states agreeing to abide by decisions reached there; 3) the establishment of the Constitution of the World federation; 4) the ratification of such Constitution by each Parliament; 5) elections to the World Parliament as provided for by the Constitution.”
Finally, the Congress was consulted by the Young Federalists on various points which had been debated by the junior congress at Hastings, such as the reform of the confederal structure of the movement and the necessity of developing it beyond the western hemisphere, the guarantee that the orientation and action of federalists should not let it be supposed that World Government might be synonymous with international status quo: an entity likely to block the struggle of colonial peoples for equality of rights and opportunities. In general the Young Federalists, like the supporters of the PWC and like the World Citizens led by Garry Davis, had at that time a more maximalist attitude than that of the Universal Movement as a whole.
Garry Davis, young actor and American ex-service pilot, had joined the UWF on his return to civilian life. Being, as Guy Marchand was later to define him, “the man of spectacular gestures”, not an organiser, a thinker or a theoretician, he monopolized for two years the newspapers of Paris and aroused the enthusiasm of crowds, popularizing the idea of World federation and of universal citizenship. For all that time he remained in contact with WMWFG, without however accepting that his supporters, who from the beginning of 1949 had been part of the International Register of World Citizens, should be absorbed by that organization, since he considered it “a mobilization center for one worlders rather than an ‘approach’ or a specific line of strategy”. On 25th May 1948 he renounced his American citizenship, and on 12th September he took refuge in the Palais de Chaillot, at that time under the jurisdiction of the UN. The publicity success was enormous, and Robert Sarrazac[20] was able to create, in his wake, a committee of solidarity whose members – eminent figures – contributed to set up other spectacular operations in France. As Albert Camus was later to write in Combat, Garry Davis had succeeded perfectly in launching a “cry of alarm”. However, little by little, relations between Davis and his supporters became tense, even before he left again for New York in March 1950. Guy Marchand, one of his first companions and his secretary, said for example that “Garry Davis is finished for World federalism”.
Criticism had in any case been lively, and had come both from the pacifist field, like that published in Esprit which accused him of “wanting to make peace by magic”, and from European federalists, such as Jean Maurice Martin, who wrote in Fédération: “France gave Garry Davis the kind of reception which is usually kept for those who pull the wool over the police’s eyes, who make fun of the teacher and go on hunger strike in the name of human brotherhood. The Frenchman has always felt sympathy for anyone a little bizarre, mysterious and prophet-like, buffoon and victim, crackpot do-it-yourselfers of the Concours Lépine,[21] and creators of grand systems, who take recourse with the same calm courage in professions of faith and mystification”.
After his departure, Sarrazac continued for some time to exploit the still vibrant enthusiasm he had aroused, to develop the “mundialisation” of territorial and non-territorial communities which he saw as representing a collective counter-attraction to world citizenship. They developed quickly in France, but also in West Germany, Belgium, Denmark, and, beyond Europe, in India, Japan and later Canada. The same tactic of “appealing to the people” had been adopted in the United States in 1948 in the form of World Government Weeks at Chicago, Minneapolis or Miami.
In the meantime the WMWFG had continued its activities and had prepared its third Congress, held at Stockholm in the summer of 1949. Alexandre Marc prepared and proposed an ambitious plan of action, with the intention of co-ordinating the various approaches worked out by the Movement, but this plan in the end was not adopted, while the internal debate continued on the necessity or otherwise of federalising the federalists. Elisabeth Mann Borgese summed up the situation of the Universal Movement effectively when in May 1949 she wrote in Common Cause that “the World movement as a federalist organization now faces the necessity of enacting federalism on itself, on infringing on the sovereignty of its member organizations in favor of a dividing world policy. The limbs are aching. The Garry Davis action, reaching for the first time in the history of the Movement the imagination of the masses, and the impetus of the Peoples’ Convention idea – both have grown too tall for the suit tailored at Luxembourg.”
The Congress of Stockholm, although it was one of the best prepared among those of the early years, did not conclude, in contrast to the preceding ones, with the adoption of a declaration summing up the proceedings, nor was the line taken by the Movement specified. About thirty-five members took part, coming from fifteen countries and from thirty-one organizations, mostly from Europe and the USA, but also from India, Japan and New Zealand. The Congress began with a debate on the statutes, of which one of the principal points was the acceptance or not of World Citizens and their various associations into the Movement.
It was eventually decided that the members of the WMWFG could be put into four categories: local, national or international federal organizations; associations promoting world citizenship; affiliated organizations with reasons for being different, but sympathetic to the cause of World federalism; individual members.
Numerous papers were distributed to the congress delegates, in particular thanks to the efforts of Alexandre Marc, on the revision of the Charter, the constituent method, the parliamentary approach, regional federations, and on other subjects such as world citizenship, atomic energy, international trade and unemployment, the colonial question and the problem of refugees, food, population, functionalist federalism, the World constitution, and East-West relations.
On the eve of the Congress Elisabeth Mann Borgese wrote, again in Common Cause, that “‘World Government’ had often remained an empty slogan like ‘peace’”, that the question “What kind of World Government?” could no longer be avoided, and that it was no longer possible to turn one’s back on economic and social problems connected to the question of the World Government. She went on to condemn the infighting among supporters of different strategies: the promoters of the PWC against those of the reform of the UN, the Europeanists against the globalists and the minimalists against the maximalists.
Numerous papers on the regional approach were also discussed, in particular that of Alexandre Marc[22] and that of Henry Brugmans,[23] more Europeanist than World federalist, according to some. At the end the Congress adopted the text of its sub-committee on the regional approach, which established that action for World Government should not necessarily limit itself to the world level. Hence all regional movements, if they fitted into a World federalist perspective, should be encouraged, in particular that for the European Federation, which could help bring about balance between East and West. The Congress also congratulated UEF for its efforts towards achieving European federalism; it asked that the new organs of the WMWFG should, on the educational and political level, seek a common basis of action with regional federalists, whose aims were compatible with theirs, and encouraged them to unite with World federalists. Peter Hunnot observed in the October issue of Humanity that a paper opposing the regional approach had had to be withdrawn because of the glaring lack of support. Finally the Congress sent a memorandum to the Stockholm Conference of the Interparliamentary Union, which it considered “the most direct representative body of the peoples of the world” and for this reason suited to “propose the basis for a popular representative World Assembly for the direction of World Affairs.”
The failure of the constituent method and the Congress of Rome.
Some days before the WMWFG, the Young World Federalists had held their Congress at Copenhagen,[24] and in December Lord Boyd Orr received the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1947, following the adoption of the Usborne Plan by the British Parliamentary Group, the movement Crusade for World Government was created with the aim of broadcasting the plan as widely as possible. In every country, or in as many as possible, popular non-official elections were to be held, in order to elect representatives – one for every million inhabitants – to the People’s World Constituent Assembly. After a preparatory meeting at Ghent in March 1950, this Assembly was to be held in Geneva in the autumn. In the end, only Tennessee succeeded in holding an election, which however was official, under the Harwell Law, passed in April 1949. In no other point of the globe was it possible to organize elections of this type, despite the help of the international secretariat of the World Citizens and of the Mundialised Communities, and despite the commitment also of substantial sections of the world federalist movement in Great Britain, the United States and Scandinavia, and of smaller groups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In consequence, the meeting in Geneva which took place in the presence of only three delegates from Tennessee and one from Nigeria, whose validity was initially contested, could no longer be anything other than a purely symbolic act. An act, wrote Elisabeth Mann Borgese, of the same value as that of Garry Davis when he gave up his American citizenship, encamping in “global territory” and proclaiming himself the first Citizen of the World; Elisabeth Mann Borgese furthermore expressed her doubts in Common Cause, regarding the potential of the Convention of Geneva, which was “the work of one man, and one man alone, lawyer Fyke Farmer of Nashville, Tennessee.” Moreover, the organization in Geneva lacked the military rigour of Sarrazac who had “created Garry Davis” and, while the symbolic act of the latter opened new possibilities of action, potentially unlimited, “the Geneva Convention ran the immediate risk of being at the same time a beginning and an end”.
Geneva was also the context of deep conflict and disagreement between the supporters of Farmer, who joined together for this course of action within a World Action Committee for the Peoples’ World Convention, whose activity ceased after another meeting in Paris in November 1951, and other groups, such as the international secretariat of the World Citizens, the WMWFG and its Steering Committee for the PWC, which created the World Council for the Constituent People’s Assembly. With regard to Geneva, Guy Marchand wrote that two organisms which sought to destroy each other, the WMWFG and the International Secretariat of the World Citizens, have allied themselves in order to destroy the organisers of this Congress. The law which had allowed the official election of the delegates in Tennessee was finally declared illegal and abrogated in 1952 by an American Court of Justice.
In the meantime the WSF held their fourth Congress at Folkestone at the end of the summer of 1950, in an atmosphere poisoned by the Korean conflict and in which, according to their out-going secretary Norman J. Hart, “it has become increasingly difficult to put forward World Government as a possible alternative”. The Congress, in a declaration in five points, mentioned the most common traditional strategic approaches, spoke of decolonialization, of economic aid and of human rights, and reaffirmed its support for regional federalism, particularly with reference to the Schuman Plan.
In 1950 the WMWFG had no congress, departing from custom, but this year was used above all for preparing the Congress to be held the following year in Rome, which was to be split into two parts in order to establish at the same time an international conference of organizations sympathising with the cause of World federalism. The WMWFG at that time comprised fifty-three organizations, with a total of about 150,000 members. At the beginning of June 1950 in Paris there was a preparatory conference for the Congress held in the Fédération offices, at the same time as the statutory meetings of the Executive Committee and then of the Council. Elisabeth Mann Borgese, who reported on it in Common Cause in August 1950, in the same article also specified the Universal Movement’s plan of action for that year, based on four premises: to evolve its action from national to international level; to sub-divide its programme into various politico-constitutional, socio-economic and cultural fields; to find external links with World federalist circles in order to develop its action wherever it was little represented, and operate a mixture of different approaches previously adopted and of programmes which they involved.
As regarded more specifically Latin America, Pierre Hovelaque, militant Argentinian pacifist and federalist, who was to become secretary general of the WMWFG for that period, had indicated what were, in his opinion, the necessary conditions for World federalism to develop in this part of the world. He recognized, first of all, that Latin America, with the exception of the Latin Americans resident in Europe, had never had a very active role in the cause of world unity and so he set himself the problem of how to remedy this state of affairs. Any popular determination freely expressed, or any federalist propaganda, was destined in the majority of cases to be blocked by totalitarian regimes; and even where this was not the case, it was inconceivable to organize mass political actions like those organized in Europe and the United States. It was therefore imperative for World federalist action, and in particular for that in favour of the Constituent Assembly, to find connections in parliamentary and trade union circles.[25]
The Paris meeting had been organized with this in mind. Twenty-one religious, political, cultural, economic and social organizations participated (sixty had been invited), all deemed likely to co-operate on limited objectives for a limited period. The UEF was represented by Henri Frenay and Usellini, among others, respectively President and Secretary General of the European federalists. L’Union française des fédéralistes also applied to be affiliated to the WMWFG on this occasion. Despite these renewed contacts, the UEF finally decided to stay outside the Congress of Rome, even though at Paris the WMWFG had supported its plan for a federal European pact. Finally, African and Asiatic representatives of the Congress of Peoples against Imperialism also participated at the Paris meeting, under their president, the Labour Parliamentarian Fenner Brockway and his secretary general Jean Rous.[26] The Congress of Rome was thus supposed to be, as Elisabeth Mann Borgese hoped in Common Cause, “the summit of non-official action for World Government, or even better, a sort of general States of the World?” Things did not go like this, even though it took place as planned in April 1951, in the presence of about two hundred participants, of whom only sixty-nine were federalist delegates. The Council of the WMWFG had invited the Partisans of Peace, which was of communist inspiration, to participate. However, this invitation could not be honoured, as the UWF refused to accept this organization and, to obtain its withdrawal, was prepared even to stake its own membership of the movement. The UWF obtained satisfaction, but this exclusion provoked a series of resignations in the decision-making organs of the WMWFG. Thus the latter, after Rome, became even more subject to the more conservative and minimalist Scandinavian and North American sections.
For the first time, the existence of the movement came into question, and it emerged weakened from a Congress whose final motion had little to do with the declarations which had preceded it, contenting itself with paraphrasing the positions reaffirmed shortly before in Washington by the UWF for a universal Federal World Government with powers strictly limited to arms control. As regards regional federations, the political commission’s report only mentioned that the formation of regional federations could still be considered a step in the right direction, and that they were not incompatible with either of the two methods, reform of the UN or PWC, supported by the movement. General Riiser-Larsen, a Norwegian polar explorer, was elected third president of the WMWFG, while Count Sforza, Italian Foreign Minister, spoke of his support for European federalism as a priority, and Pope Pious XII received a small delegation from the Congress.
The struggle for the reform of the UN and the second setback for World federalism.
The WMWFG was in crisis and being guided by its most minimalist current; the supporters of the PWC, affected by the set back of Geneva and the World Citizens, after the first burst of enthusiasm needed to find a new impetus; many periodicals had to cease publication, such as Peuple du Monde in 1950, Humanity and Common Cause in 1951, World Government News in 1952, to mention only the most important. After the withdrawal of the invitation to the Partisans of Peace, the WMWFG and World federalism as a whole were for a long time accused by soviet propaganda[27] of being the “fig leaf of American capitalism” and the apologists of imperialism and in effect took on, for the most part, an increasingly pro-western attitude.
In the United States at Des Moines, in June 1951, the majority of its juvenile section cut itself off from the UWF to create in October a new association, the World Order Realized Through Law and Democracy (WORLD), believing that to call for peace in a purely propagandistic way was not sufficient and that it was necessary to consider the economic and social aspects of the international order.
It was in this situation that the WSF held its fifth Congress in Copenhagen in August 1951, limiting itself to reaffirming in broad outline the positions adopted the previous year in Folkestone as to regional federations, the problems of development, and human rights.
After Rome, the Council of the WMWFG was composed of nineteen Americans, British and Scandinavians out of thirty members, eight of whom were however members of the UWF; it was a geographical and political balance diametrically opposed to that achieved at Montreux, and the Movement, at least until 1955, gave priority to the reform of the UN Charter. Rolf Paul Haegler wrote on this subject that the situation, starting from 1951, differed on many counts from that of previous years, and that in the absence of popular support, they should rather hope to obtain the institution of a “World Security Authority” through the action of governments and of the United Nations, avoiding speaking as before of World Government, in order not to offend the nationalism that was reviving above all in the United States, where Senator Joseph McCarthy and his supporters were on the rampage.
Right from the creation of the UN, the Charter of the Organization provided, in Article 109, paragraph three, that its revision had to be on the agenda of the tenth annual session of the General Assembly, and so in 1955. It was towards this very objective that the WMWFG directed its actions, when it met in London at the first Parliamentary Conference on World Government in the presence of two hundred and thirty delegates, including thirty-seven parliamentarians from twenty-four countries. The initiative had been taken by British MPs supporting World federalism, the Parliamentary Group for World Government, and by the popular British Parliamentary Association for World Government created to provide support for the action of the parliamentary group. This first Conference of parliamentarians adopted a minimalist resolution and decided to set up a World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government, which effectively came into being in 1952.
Many sections of the WMWFG started studying the revision of the UN Charter and the Universal Movement held a study conference at Ulempas, in August 1952, some weeks before the second Conference of Parliamentarians. The president of the Universal Movement, Riisar Larsen, saw in the reform of the UN the first decisive battle of the federalists, and foresaw that the more maximalist the proposals advanced, the more bitter and difficult the struggle at the Conference of 1955 would be. At Ulempas it was officially decided to put the accent on the reform of the international organization and to relegate to second place the Peoples’ World Convention. The other approaches, functionalist, parliamentarian, or regional, like integral federalism and the successes of the global approaches, were merely mentioned. Some World federalists remained however quite aware of the necessity of setting a timetable for their action: one of these was Jacques Savary of the World Council for the PWC, who had been linked to the WMWFG from its creation in Geneva in January 1951. He highlighted the impossibility, in this state of affairs, of a real World Federation, because it presupposed “the existence, in the whole world, of political, social, economic, demographic and cultural conditions which are far from being reached”. Dr. Mackay, Vice-President of Federal Union, also declared “that there is no short cut for the creation of a World Federal Government” and made himself the champion of regional federations in Western Europe, in Africa, in Arab countries and in Latin America in order to end Russo-American bi-polarism.
The sixth Congress of WSF, an organization which by then was moribund and which Ulempas had even thought of dissolving, also declared, at Amsterdam in August, its support for UN reform.
The second Conference of Parliamentarians and the official creation of the Universal Association of Parliamentarians for a World Government took place in London in September, before three hundred participants from thirty countries, and the proceedings were opened by the British Foreign Secretary. The Association brought together members from fifteen parliaments, and the British group was formed of sixty-one members belonging to the three parties, Conservative, Liberal and Labour. The agenda included among other things, the following points: amendment of the UN Charter; development of under-developed areas in the direction of a World Government; relations between regional federations; World Government. There were numerous organizations represented, such as GATT, the UN, FAO and UNICEF, and socio-economic, cultural, political and religious associations. Two plans were discussed and, in the end, jointly approved, noted as Plan A and Plan B. Plan A indicated in detail the exact powers of a World Government, which implied “substantial amendment of the UN Charter designed to produce a genuine and, we believe, workable scheme of World Government to replace the present international anarchy”; in Plan B, on the contrary, “no redrafting of the Charter has been attempted. The proposals merely state five principles designed to extend the operations of the United Nations”. Plan B, less ambitious, aimed thus only to set up transitory measures which allowed the way to be held open for the creation of World Government.
The texts adopted by the second Interparliamentary Conference were to serve as a basis for the convocation of the three Conferences and Congresses which were to be held in Copenhagen in August: indeed some days later in that city the Congress of the WSF, then a joint Conference of Parliamentarians and the WMWFG, and the fifth Congress of the latter were held.
World Federalist Youth adopted a plan of action which underlined that its principal objective was “the strengthening of the UN by Charter’s revision” and approved various resolutions on human rights, on the situation of Berlin, on the creation of a World Development Authority, on the condemnation of colonialism and on the rights of peoples to self-determination. The joint Conference of Parliamentarians and the WMWFG was attended by almost five-hundred participants coming from almost thirty countries, representing as many national parliaments. The WMWFG Congress, for its part, reaffirmed the primacy of UN reform over the method of Constituent Assembly, which provoked friction with the World Council for the PWC .The definitive separation of the two groups was by now merely a question of time and was made fact in January 1954. The attitude to be adopted towards Communists, towards colonial countries and towards a world development fund gave rise to argument. Federal Union proposed an important document on regional federalism. The position taken by Congress concerning European Federation was fairly explicit, because it affirmed that “a Western European Federation is to be welcomed by World federalists as the solution to many of the problems of Europe, and above all as the end of much of the European anarchy which was the cause of two world wars.” It stresses the danger however of a European Defence Community “in absence of a political democratic authority” and declared that “the European Political Community will permit the creation of this authority”.[28] The WMWFG finally directed its own congratulations to the UEF “for the greatest effort the world has yet seen to replace national sovereignty by federation”.
The Congresses and Conference of Copenhagen and the resolutions adopted by them on UN reform established, according to Rolf P. Haegler, the doctrine of the Universal Movement at least for a decade, and the majority of World federalists kept a positive memory of Copenhagen, particularly compared to the Congress of Rome.
As we have seen, the World Council for the PWC was much more critical and was to reprove the WMWFG, in its information bulletin of September 1953, for having renounced its role as co-ordinator for the World federalist movement and for being increasingly at the beck and call of western interests.
In the hope that the question of the revision of the Charter should indeed come up in 1955, the WMWFG in 1954 and in 1955 concentrated all its energies on this point. For the whole of 1954 it organized preparatory conferences for this purpose, particularly in Asia, where the principal conference – organized in collaboration with the Japanese section of the WMWFG and by the Japan Association for World Government – took place in Tokyo in May on the subject of the necessarily universal character of the UN. In Australia, seventeen associations of national importance organized, together with the World federalists, an important convention on the UN, while study groups looking at the UN Charter were set up in countries such as Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, Holland, India, Japan and France. While the strength of the Universal Movement continued to diminish, so that in 1954, at the time of the London Congress, it numbered only twenty-five organizations, with about 57,000 members, an important meeting of Scandinavian federalists was planned for 1955.
The sixth Congress of the WMWFG, which modified the name of the movement to World Association for World Federation (WAWF), was held in London between the end of August and the beginning of September, following that of the WSF, held in Copenhagen in May. It took place moreover only 48 hours before the fourth Conference of the Parliamentarians. The principal questions debated were the revision of the Copenhagen resolutions of the previous summer, the creation of a World Development Fund and other economic questions. From the London meetings there emerged an amended version of the texts of Copenhagen on UN reform, which the WMWFG eventually refused to sign and which was therefore circulated only by parliamentarians, under the title London Manifesto. Again World federalists noted their acceptance of the regional method which aimed to create, before World federation, large continental federations. Again they refused to draw from this acceptance the practical conclusion for their actions. The WMWFG, in its Final Report on the Regional Approach to World Federal Government, agreed only on the fact that “at the present juncture of world history it is impossible to indicate anyone road towards World Government”; the regional federations could be a possible way, on condition that they answered certain constitutional, humanitarian and democratic criteria. Finally, the Congress considered that “European institutions must be reinforced and developed” and decided to “continue examining possibilities for federation or progressive co-operation in the countries of Latin America, in the Antilles, in the Middle East and in the Arab World.”
Conclusion.
After having promoted two strategies which failed one after the other – the constituent method and then the revision of the UN Charter – World federalists were obliged to re-assess their ambitions, to the point of being accused of servilely following the UN.
In actual fact, the revision of the Charter, which it was hoped would happen by 1955, never took place: it was initially put off for ten years, to be delayed indefinitely in 1965.
At the same time the WMWFG and the World federalists, by refusing really to adopt regional federalism, and contenting themselves with an ambiguous support for it and particularly for the process of European integration, deprived themselves for all those years of the only means at their disposal to have a real influence on the course of history.
One of the chief historians of World federalism, Finn Laursen, wrote that, even if in 1955 they still to some extent supported regional federations, this problem no longer attracted their attention after that date.[29] It was only at the Congress of Brussels in 1972 that the WMWFG again seriously considered the EEC and the prospects that European integration opened up.
Despite the divergence of points of view during these years, the opposition and then the reciprocal indifference between World and European federalists, they still had various cultural points of reference in common. To take an expression of Mario Albertini, “the peace culture, in opposition to the war culture”, sooner or later had to bring them together,[30] all the more so since the great debate that had divided them constituted common themes of discussion within both federalist approaches: which structure, confederal or federal, for the international federalist movement; functionalism, working within existing institutions or the constituent approach of a more revolutionary type (PWC and the Congress of the European People); maximalism or minimalism; what re-apportioning of powers between the various levels of European or world power ...
The increasing closeness of the different components of the international movement of federalists (World, Atlantic and European) is well under way today. Their contacts are increasingly regular and characterized by reciprocal trust, in an epoch in which the new policy of Michail Gorbachev – if nationalism does not prevail – gives a glimpse of real possibilities of struggle beyond regional federations, for the slow, gradual transformation of the UN into a real Federal World Government.[31]
[1]Clarence Streit, New York Times correspondent to the League of Nations, wrote Union Now in 1939 and created in July of that same year, in New York, the Interdemocracy Federal Unionists Inc., which became Federal Union Inc. in 1940. In 1939 Streit saw in the union of democracies the only means of checking totalitarian powers and fascism, before the USSR, in his opinion, took the position of power which had been that of the Axis powers. This was before he collaborated in creating the Atlantic Union Committee. Given the World federalists’ refusal to countenance Atlantic federation I shall not consider Streit nor his supporters further in this paper: in fact, as Rolf P. Haegler wrote, World federalism could not become itself without breaking with Streit.
[2]Tom O. Griessemer, “World federation,” in Basis of Federalism, Paris, World Student Federalists, 1949, pp. 31-4.
[3]Rolf P. Haegler, Histoire et Idéologie du Mondialisme, Zürich, Europa Verlag, 1972, p. 13.
[4]On feminism and pacifism during the First World War and on Rosika Schwimmer, see Anne Wiltsher, Most Dangerous Women (Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War), London, Pandora Press, 1985. See also, in connection with the International Congress of the The Hague, which was to call for “the constitution of an international federation”, the Report of the International Congress of Women, Amsterdam, International Women’s Committee for Permanent Peace, 1915; Edith Wynner, World Federal Government, Why, What? How? in Maximum Terms, New York, Fedonat Press, 1954, and the collective pamphlet Rosita Schwimmer, World Patriot, London, 1947. From the first publication of Union Now, Schwimmer, after some meetings and exchange of correspondence with Streit, formally opposed herself to his convictions (thus providing a forewarning of the split in the American federalist movement during the Second World War) in her pamphlet Union Now, for Peace or War, Chicago, Campaign for World Government, 1939.
[5]“Observer,” United World federalists, Federal News, London, no. 156, May 1947, p.8.
[6]In Les Etats-Unis du Monde, Paris, Senac, 1949.
[7]Walter Lipgens, in History of European Integration, 1945-1947, The Formation of the European Unity Movement, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982, pp. 312-13, writes on this subject that “M. Voisin, of La Fédération of Paris, argued that federation did not simply mean World Government, but would consist of a pyramid of communities with more extensive authority the higher one went, from municipalities to nations and from regional federations to World Government”.
[8]On this subject, see the sharp comment by André Voisin in November 1948 in Fédération: “Mr. Usborne, British Labour M.P., and his American friends, proposed the constitution in 1950 of a planetary assembly, each member of which would have to be elected by a million World Citizens, and the formation of a single working government from this assembly of two hundred representatives. The Yankees explained with satisfaction the mathematical simplicity of the mechanisms which would be set up. With strict equality, total peace would reign: a sole authority, with sole power would prevent for ever the necessity of using the atomic bomb. This primitive conception of how to arrange things and govern people was, it was said, that of the greatest experts from beyond the Atlantic. This view of society as a geometric problem provoked the lively protests of the Italians, Dutch, Belgians, Swiss and French present, as well as of many British.”
[9]On this point see the comments by Henri Brugmans (in Walter Lipgens, op. cit., pp. 588-590), elected to posts of responsibility in both organizations, according to whom it was at that time difficult “to make appropriate use of our victory over the World federalists”. In a letter to Lipgens, Brugmans returned to this comment in 1966 specifying that “the ‘victory’ consisted in the fact that we had secured the principle of ‘a World confederation of regional federations’ and also a pro-European majority on the Executive. But the victory was no use because we had too few forces to make use of it; the World federalist movements were utopian as far as most of their members were concerned”.
[10]See the Plan in Outline, London, Crusade for World Government, 1948, or, for the version presented at Montreux, Federal News (no. 149, August 1947, pp. 1-5); likewise Henry Usborne “The People’s Convention Approach”, in Basis of Federalism, op. cit., pp. 44-46.
[11]The Committee of Atomic Scientists was created between May and August 1946 under the presidency of Einstein (who from the time of the First World War had belonged to the Berlin group Neues Vaterland) and very quickly took up a federalist position. At the end of June 1947, at Pocono Pines, it announced its support for the Plan in Outline and decided to institute a Foundation for World Government. The Committee suspended its activities in 1947 and was dissolved in 1951.
[12]Cord Meyer Jr., first president of the UWF (and thus group-leader at Montreux of most of the delegates coming from the United States) changed his attitude completely later on, to the point of taking on senior responsibilities in the CIA.
[13]Rolf P. Haegler, op. cit., p. 20.
[14]Grenville Clark was highly critical from the very beginning of the plan for the UN Charter prepared by the allies at the conference of Dumberton Oaks. Being a jurist, he called a conference in Dublin (New Hampshire) in 1945 which launched an appeal for the immediate replacement of the UN with a “Federal World Government”, but ended up by concentrating on article 109, paragraph three, of the Charter of San Francisco, which provided for its revision. He had an important influence on the World federalist movement, particularly on the minimalist component, thanks to his various writings: first A Plan for Peace, then World Peace through World Law. See Joseph P. Baratta, Grenville Clark World Federalist, Amsterdam, IGPS, 1985.
[15]Elisabeth Mann Borgese, “Luxembourg Balance Sheet,” in Common Cause, vol. II, no. 5, December 1948, pp. 175-77. Despite this fact and its intellectual qualities, the Chicago project did not influence the thinking of the World federalist movement for long. For a short history of the Committee of Chicago and its origins, see the preface of Elisabeth Mann Borgese to the re-issue of the “Draft World Constitution” in A Constitution for the World, Santa Barbara (Calif.), Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1965.
[16]Rolf P. Haegler, op. cit., p. 164.
[17]Quoted in “La méthode fonctionnaliste,” in Monde Uni, no. 10, February 1969, p. 12.
[18]Emery Reves, Hungarian by birth, founded several anti-Nazi printing offices and press organisms in 1930 in Paris. He took refuge in New York in 1941 and played an important role in the early years of the world federalist movement, in particular with his book Anatomy of Peace (London, Penguin Books, 1947) which had considerable success and was translated into several languages in the period immediately following the war.
[19]On the altercations at Luxembourg over the PWC see also Jean-Maurice Martin who wrote in Fédération, in October 1948: “We came back from it a little disappointed, but especially worried and fearful for the very destiny of the movement. A large proportion of the assembly, a minority however, certainly demonstrated the highest degree of militant faith, but also an incomplete comprehension of the political imperatives of the moment, and, as regards federalism, an absolute doctrinal poverty ... We are glad to acknowledge that at the same time various top level American movements demonstrated the political realism we expected, and a perfect knowledge of federalist doctrine, in particular The United World federalists ... and The Committee to Frame a World Constitution”.
[20]Robert Sarrazac, official of the French Resistance, created the Front Humain des Citoyens du Monde in Paris in 1946. Present in that capacity at Montreux and Luxembourg, he took up again the points of agreement and disagreement in his publication Lettres aux Citoyens du Monde (supplement no. 2 to the 10th Letter, 21 August 1947) and affirmed his preference for the constituent method. On colonial problems and on the European federation, see also the 9th letter (August 1947, points 6 and 7).
[21]Famous French contest for amateur inventors.
[22]“Working for World Government doesn’t imply working on a world scale ... regional groupings constitute progress compared to the present ‘feudal’ or nationalistic divisions ... Regional forces, however, are not enough to eliminate the necessity and the urgency of a World Government, but, if anything, make it even more necessary, for the purpose of ensuring co-ordination and avoiding war between regional units ... Regional federations are not only stages, as is often supposed, but constitutive and permanent elements of the structure of a World Government”; but also “it is indispensable to show up the dangers of certain tendencies which could hide behind the screen of regionalism. ‘Nationalism’ is all the more harmful when it forms into more powerful units”.
[23]“We can no longer content ourselves with repeating certain slogans, incontestable as they may be, such as ‘only a World Government can guarantee peace’ ...; among the first generation of fighters for federalism, some will find it difficult to overcome this first passage. They will bewail the period in which World federalism, still without concrete responsibilities, could simply proclaim its truth before a world in anguish. It is absurd to say: ‘We are concerned with the world, Europe does not interest us here’ ... Moreover, the European federalists belonging to WMWFG cannot continue to be part of it, if they do not feel themselves understood and supported by an organization to whose birth they have greatly contributed. They cannot submit to a stricter discipline from the Universal Movement, if the general line followed by them has not been approved by Stockholm ... Abstract declarations like those of Montreux and Luxembourg are no longer enough.”
[24]On the subject of European federation, the Congress stated that “the collapse of the European economy would produce conditions very unfavourable to the constitution of a federal government. A European federation would avoid this danger and would determine a development in the European economy which would allow it to play a positive and beneficial role in the world economy. It has to be stressed however that unless the European federation takes a global perspective in matters of policy, it would damage rather than improve the political and economic situation worldwide.”
[25]Pierre Hovelaque in Common Cause quotes as a possible source of research on Latin-American World federalism, the Asociacion Pacifista Argentina (APA), which was affiliated to WMWFG from 1947, and its publication Pacifismo. Similarly see Reconciliaciòn, a journal of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and from June 1953 to late 1960s, Nuevo Mondo, journal of the Movimiento pro Federaciòn Americana, edited at Bogota and later on Buenos Aires.
[26]On contacts between the Congress of Peoples Against Imperialism (created with the backing of Gandhi, and which grouped together most of the organizations of colonial peoples in Africa and Asia) and the WMWFG, see the testimonies of Jean Rous, in particular chapter 3, “L’action anticolonialiste,” in Itinéraire d’un militant (Paris, Jeune Afrique, 1968, pp. 193-214) and Jean-Francis Billion and Jean-Luc Prevel, “Jean-Rous and Federalism,” in The Federalist, XXVIII (1986), pp. 119-130. For African federalism and its World federalist connotations, see Fall Cheikh Bamba, “African Federalism,” in The Federalist, XXIX (1987), pp. 159-177 and the anthology of texts by Senghor, N’Krumah and Nyerere published by Guido Montani in Il Terzo mondo e l’unità europea, Naples, Guida, 1979.
[27]On Soviet or communist criticisms of World federalism, see “The Soviet Union and World Government,” in Journal of Politics, Vol. 15, 1953, pp. 231-253, as well as the World federalist press and that linked to the Partisans of Peace. For criticisms coming from the American right wing, see Finn Laursen “Youth and World federalism – Part Six – The Consolidation of the UN Approach – WSF 1952-1953,” in Contact, April 1972, pp. 17-24.
[28]This position on the EDC was taken up again for example by C. Gaude, president of the Belgian Union fédérale, however personally hostile he was to that institution, in L’Arc en Ciel (2nd year, no.11, p. 2): “The EDC would be admissible, perhaps, only on condition that the consequences which it could bring were preventively subjected to the control and appraisal of a common civil parliamentary authority.” On the way European integration was seen by American federalists of the time, see, among other things, in The Federalist (UWF News Magazine), January 1953, vol. 2, no. 8, “European Union - A New Continent in the Making” and “A European Draft Constitution by March 10”.
[29]Finn Laursen, “World federalists facing the Issue of Regional Federalism,” in Contact, July-August 1972.
[30]Mario Albertini, “War Culture and Peace Culture,” in The Federalist, XXVI (1984), pp. 9-31.
[31]In order not to weigh down the text further, some sources have not been listed here. It is worth mentioning first of all the well-documented studies of Finn Laursen, Federalism and World Order, Volume I and particularly Volume II, pub. World Federalist Youth, Copenhagen, 1972, and his series of studies on world federalist youth, “How it started”, published between 1968 and 1972 in the organization’s journal, Contact. Other useful references are: Walter Lipgens, Documents on the History of European Integration, 1939-1950, Florence, European University Institute, (the first three volumes were published from 1985-1988); Joseph P. Baratta, Strengthening the United Nations: a Bibliography on UN Reform and World Federalism, Greenwood (Mass.), Westport, 1987; Garry Davis, My Country is the World, London, McDonald, 1962; Guy Marchand, Somme mondialiste (3 volumes), Paris, Club Humaniste, 1975 and L’Epopée Garry Davis, Paris, at the Author’s expense, 1989; Max Habicht, The Abolition of War, Paris, Club Humaniste, 1987; Wesley T. Wooley, Alternatives to Anarchy (American Supranationalism Since World War II), Bloomington, Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1988; Robert Sarrazac, L’Expérience de mondialisation de 480 communes françaises (techniques d’approche de la Mondialité), Nimes, 1957, and La mondialisation des communes et l’approche de la mondialité, Paris, 1958; The London Resolution on World Government, London, Association universelle des parlementaires pour un gouvernement mondial, 1953, and also, from the same publisher, the reports of the first, second and third parliamentary world federalist conferences in London. Apart from the documentation on microfiche that goes with the work of the above-mentioned W. Lipgens, mention must also be made of the following republications, also on microfiche, for the use of researchers: Britain in Europe since 1945 (Reading, Research Publication Ltd), which deals again with the principal publications of the British Federal Union from 1940 to 1962; more recently, Joseph P. Baratta’s The World Federalist Movement (New York, Norman Ross Publishing Cy, 1989) draws on some proceedings of the Committee of Chicago, almost the entire American federalist, Atlantist or World federalist press, from the beginning of the Second World War, and some international English language publications linked to WMWFG. In addition to the publications quoted, mention should be made of the following titles, which were consulted for this study, though all too often in incomplete collections: Freedom or Union, World Federation Now, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, The Federalist, One World, published in the United States, and various others published in Europe: Humanity, Notizie Federalisti Mondiali, Der Europeen, L’Unità Europea, Federal Union News, Federal News, L’Action fédéraliste europeenne, Europa, Crusade Contact (in Humanity), Alert for World government, Crusade for World government Newsletter, Pour des Institutions mondiales, Citoyens du Monde, Peuple du Monde, Le Bulletin fédéraliste, Bulletin d’information du MUCM, Crusade Newsletter (international steering committee), World Movement for World Federal Government Newsletter, Bulletin de l’Agence mondialiste de Presse, News Digest WMWFG, L’Arc en Ciel, Bulletin d’information du Conseil mondial pour l’Assemblée Constituante des Peuples, Informations fédéralistes (UEF), Voice of the World Citizens, Current Topics and World Federalist.
