Conclusion

Summary

Writing to a British acquaintance in March 1951, Walter Lippmann, then at the height of his fame as a foreign affairs commentator, described Clarence Streit as “an old friend” who “has built his whole crusade on an hysterical illusion” – that the federal union of the thirteen American states forged in Philadelphia in 1787 offered a model for the countries of the North Atlantic in the mid-twentieth century. “I regard the campaign as on the whole well-meaning,” Lippmann explained in regard to Streit’s activities, “but very misguided. Its effect is to miseducate rather than to educate American opinion, at least. But I never attack it or criticize it publicly because there are so many worse things abroad.”¹