We must aim at a federalized Europe.
The idea of a federalized Europe, regulated by an Areopagus, involving the disappearance, or substantial reduction, of standing armies and navies, and the submission of all disputes to a Central Council, is not to be dismissed. It is the ultimate goal to aim at. But it cannot be attained until the constitutionally governed democracies of the West are brought to realize how impossible it is that their moral and spiritual development and their happiness and well-being can be secured under a system of government which leaves them at the mercy of the intrigues and imbecilities of professional diplomatists and of the ambitions of military castes; helpless, too, in the face of an enormously powerful and internationalized private interest dependent for its profits upon the maintenance of that “armed peace” which is the inevitable prelude to the carnage and futility of war.
Democracies in the different countries must cooperate.
To awaken these sentiments among the democracies of this and other countries, to instil into them these convictions, to ensure the cooperation of all forces in all countries working to that end—is the task to which we must all turn our attention.
Potentates, diplomatists, and militarists made this war. They should not be allowed to arrange unchecked and uncontrolled the terms of peace and to decide alone the conditions which will follow it. The mass of the people who suffer from their blunders and their quarrels must claim the ineradicable right of participating in the future settlement.
And, when peace has come, the democratic parties of Europe must set before themselves a new province of political effort. That peace will be permanently preserved only if our artisans and industrialists keep up with the artisans and industrialists of other countries a constant and deliberate communication through their political parties and other organizations which will prevent misunderstandings and subdue the hatreds out of which war ultimately comes.
“The Morrow of the War,” Union of Democratic Control, London, Bulletin No. 1.
NO PEACE WITHOUT FEDERATION
The war has betrayed mankind.