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The world settlement outlined by Buell rests on an acute criticism of Clarence Streit's Union Now (a proposal for a federation of democracies). He argues that practical provision must be made for Latin America and the totalitarian States, in a new Association of Nations with regional departments such as the Pan-American Union, the British Commonwealth of Nations, a European Federation, a Pacific Conference, the U. S. S. R. What distinguishes Mr. Buell's intricate program is a realistic sense of quid pro quo: e.g., a Danubian Union would need guarantees from Britain; to give them Britain would need a guarantee from the U. S. "to protect North and South American commerce with any European state resisting an aggressor."
The Contrast between Beard and Buell is irresistibly like the contrast between the Fundamentalist and the Modernist points of view. The stern, old-fashioned eloquence is on one side; the massing of evidence on the other. Fundamentalist Beard has a simple image of the world. He writes of international relations as a matter of occasional notes between diplomats of remote nations. Modernist Buell writes of international relations in an era when radio propaganda has supplanted polite diplomatic exchanges. He envisions the world as that shrunken globe seen by Howard Hughes as he flew around it in 91 hours, as Pan-American Airways sees it every day.