Federalism and World‐Peace

Extract

A yearning for lasting peace is the common property of all times and of all peoples, and finds expression in all religions. It can be found in the conception underlying the Golden Age and in that of the Garden of Eden, just as in the eschatological idea of heavenly peace.

Christianity, as the sum total of truth, proclaims ‘peace on earth’ in the Christmas message to ‘men of good will.’

We, who are living twenty years after the world conflagration and in the midst of a new one, or rather in the re-kindling of the old, have a special duty to reflect how best wars can be prevented and a durable peace maintained. Our times, in fact, abound in such ideas and projects.

There has probably never been a war in history during which peace and its permanent organization have been so much discussed. Indeed, there has probably never been a time in the world’s history when a great turning point has been so clearly recognized and consciously experienced by so many contemporaries.

If we disregard the day-dreams of pacifists which escape from the reality of the problem into misguided asceticism or into the heresy of Gnosticism, we shall see that the ideas and schemes offering lasting peace to the world are concerned with agreements between nations, with the foedus among peoples, with federalism. Whether these effiorts appear as a reform of the League of Nations or call themselves the ‘Federal-Union’ or ‘Pan-Europe’ movement, they all aim, by some form of agreement, at banishing war from the world.