Ask John Citizen, anywhere from Portland, Ore., to Portland, Me., is he against war and he will say Yes, sure. Sure he's against war. Even smack in the midst of a war that is being won, war in the abstract, war in the future, is about as popular as the man-eating shark. Sure he's against war. Yes, sir.
Ask John Citizen how he'd go about stopping wars and he'll hem & haw and say Well —.
Disarmament?
Well—no. We've got to guard our shores and the Panama Canal and Alaska and Hawaii. Can't trust those other nations. They'd say they were going to stay disarmed and then build stuff on the sly. No, not disarmament. I'm against it.
How about an international police force to keep the peace around the world? Well, maybe you've got something there. Yes, sir. International police. I'm in favor of that.
The most extraordinary sign of America's temper today is that in a recent Gallup poll, 74% of the people voted for the idea of an "international police force." What the too pious hope of general disarmament was to the '20s, the more practically attractive picture of a world cop, hand on holster, is to the U.S. of 1943.
Among well-known citizens who want an international police force after the war are Vice President Henry Wallace, Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, Ambassador John Winant, Republican hopeful Harold Stassen of Minnesota, Philip Murray of the C.I.O., Matthew Woll of the A.F. of L., and Politico-Pundits Dorothy Thompson, Edgar Ansel Mowrer and Max Eastman. The president of the British Section of the New Commonwealth Society, for more than a decade the most vocal and powerful British group backing an international police force, is none other than Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.
And what about the problems of enlarging the simple and practical idea of local police protection to a worldwide scale? Is it a simple matter to convert the idea of a police force with squad cars and motorcycles into the idea of a police force with battleships and bombers? Actually mankind has been pondering the basic problem for a long time and knows a great deal about it both in principle and practice.
Men Have Planned for It. The dream of world peace imposed by force has had a long and largely honorable history. Although the prototype existed in such early alliances as the Greek Achaean League, up until the 19th Century international policing flourished chiefly in the realm of ideas.
It was part of the Great Design of Henry IV of France and his minister Sully. Rousseau included it in his Project for Perpetual Peace. Mild William Penn was for it. So was Abbe de Saint-Pierre. But not until 1815, when the reactionary genius of Prince Metternich bore splotchy fruit in what has accurately been called the Unholy Alliance, was international policing really put to the test of action.
Then, just as today, a dictator had tried to conquer Europe and flopped. The victorious powers of Russia, Prussia and Austria got together to keep peace by force.
They kept the "peace" of central and eastern Europe for a few decades—and with it the status quo. Inasmuch as keeping the imperial status quo meant squelching every liberal chick in its egg, the Alliance eventually could not stand against the rise of liberal fervor in Europe.