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A global government could scarcely begin to solve the big problems that lead to war—to tackle the clash of national interests concerned with the wealth of the earth, and the efforts men make to own or use or exploit or develop that wealth—with less powers in itself than are listed in these few extracts from the U.S. Constitution. A global government could not make effective such laws as it might pass, with fewer restrictions on the now sovereign nations.
Are Men Ready? Merely to read these powers and restrictions, and project them in imagination on a world scale, is to make it clear that the U.S. citizen is far from ready for anything remotely resembling a federated world government.
He wants no such government taking over the U.S. fleet and the U.S. air armada.
He wants no such government, in the course of regulating commerce between the nations, to internationalize the Panama Canal—and perhaps to send its police force down there, aboard bombing planes and battleships, to see that the U.S. clears out quietly.
He wants no such government to tax him heavily and spend the money wherever it please at the far ends of the earth.
He wants no such government, in the course of raising an army, to draft his son for service, say, under a Polish general who is trying to keep peace in the Balkans.
He wants no such government, in the interest of equal world citizenship, to force the U.S. to open its doors to immigrants from all nations, be they Japs or headhunters from Borneo.
He wants no such government making and enforcing laws that conflict with and supersede his sacred U.S. Constitution.
And in matters of trade and commerce, he wants no such government turning the borders of the U.S. into mere lines on a map, as the borders of the separate states have become.
Yet if John Citizen, U.S.A., is far from ready for a real world government, he is not alone. For neither is John Bull Citizen ready—nor Ivan nor Juan nor Jean nor Jan nor Hans.
The hold of nationalism is still deep in the people. In no nation on earth—least of all in any powerful nation—are the people yet prepared to trade their precious nationality for true world citizenship, to trust their welfare to the other peoples of the globe.
Peace by Toil. These are the hard facts which all men who like the safe and solid sound of the phrase "international police force" will have to face when the making of the peace is at hand. The seemingly easy way of providing good citizens of the world with security from outside violence is not within reach for the present.
But the fact that the easy answer does not solve the problem does not mean that the problem is insoluble. It means that the problem will require more thought, that the U.S. will have to put considerably more effort into working out the solution.
The U.S. will need to realize that it cannot safely relax into a simple alliance or loose confederation, made holier by lip service to democracy and dedicated to the maintenance of the status quo. It will have to find a framework for world order which, while keeping the peace better than before, permits change. It will have to find a framework which will make allowance for the fundamental U.S. bias toward freedom and growth for itself and for others.