CHAPTER 12

Fourfold Fulfillment

   If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if
thou doest not well, sin lies at the door. -- Genesis 4:7.
Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
   The little tyrant of his fields withstood.
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest. ***
-- Thomas Gray, Elegy in a Country Churchyard.

We have more than danger to spur us on; we have the certainty of high fulfillment in all four of our embodiments -- as part of mankind, as part of Atlantica, as part of the nation we love, and as ourselves, individually rather than compositely.

As part of mankind, we fulfill ourselves through Atlantic Union by doing the highest service we can do for Man, we do our part -- which only we can do -- in assuring that today's lurid atomic-electronic light is the sunrise of man's vast future, not the sunset. We meet the responsibility we must meet if we are to merit the name which Paine rightly called man's "high and only title" -- "Man."

We must expect much of mankind to mistrust us and our motives at the start of our Union of the Free. Our past faults now outweigh our virtues among all those who have suffered from them. We must expect this to continue to color their judgments of us for some time to come, and keep them more inclined to have fear than faith. After all, we ourselves fear rather than trust the rest of mankind; the obvious faults in the other nations, old and new, make us more skeptical than confident of their future and its effects on us. But whatever doubts and fears about them we may express, or have, we do know that it is in the interest of our freedom that they should succeed in their efforts to advance in liberty-and-union themselves. We do wish them well, and we do not mean to do anything to interfere with their efforts, however misguided they may seem to us -- unless they lose their fight against dictatorship and directly aid its efforts to destroy liberty-and-union among us, too.

We know that no matter which of these nations -- whether as great as India or as small as Lebanon, as new as Ghana and Nigeria or as old as Japan and Thailand, as far West as Brazil or as far East as Burma, whether African, Arabian, or Argentine, Iranian, Iraqi or Israeli, Mexican or Moroccan, Pakistani or Peruvian, Spanish or Sudanese; whether Animist, Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Jewish, or Islamic; whether heir of the ruins of Ankar-wat, Assyria, the Aztecs, Babylon, Baghdad, Egypt, the Incas, Persia -- no matter which of these peoples, we know that we shall warmly welcome every proof they bring in the coming years that they are winning in their sector of Man's struggle to free himself, and work peacefully with his neighbors.

We can therefore trust that, no matter how fearful and suspicious they may be of Atlantic Union at the outset, they will each in their hearts hope that our Union's policies toward them will remove their fears. As our deeds destroy their doubts, and our Union proves, as did that of the Thirteen States, that its success is in their interest, too, we can have faith that Atlantica will attract them to it more and more If America has lost some of that appeal in the last decade, is it not because it ceased to lead forward with the principle of freedom-and-union, and turned instead toward the Old World's system of power politics, alliances and arms racing? For America to return to its true tradition, by leading the way to a "more perfect Union," should suffice both to win back its lost friends and to assure them that no such error would mar the Atlantic Union's appeal to mankind.

Our Union of the Free should start with greater attracting power than the United States, for the latter began with the stain of slavery on it, and without the experience in freedom and federation we now have. But suppose that the Atlantic Union should merely equal the American Union in rousing and fulfilling the hopes of mankind. Even so, it would draw to it the new nations -- and those still suffering oppression -- by the same magnetic power that America has so long possessed, as Lord Acton attested in 1866:

Historians affirm that the French Revolution was partly caused by the successful revolution which founded the United States. If that could be at a time when nothing had been achieved but independence, and their Constitution was only beginning the career it has so grandly run, it is easy to estimate how much their influence would be increased by the permanence of their success. Accordingly America exercised a power of attraction over Europe of which the great migration is only a subordinate sign. Beyond the millions who have crossed the ocean. who shall reckon the millions whose hearts and hopes are in the United States, to whom the rising sun is in the West, and whose movements are controlled by the distant magnet, though it has not drawn them away?1

Re-assurance to the New Nations

Some fear to federate Atlantica lest the new nations should interpret this as a "ganging up of the imperialists against them" and troop into the Kremlin's arms. Moscow undoubtedly will try to make them do this. Three facts, however, should re-assure the fearful:

First, whatever the leaders of the under-developed nations may fear or say, most of them are realists enough (a) to know that such a policy would sacrifice all the advantages they hope to gain from neutrality, and all the material aid which they can get only from Atlantica, and (b) to refrain from jumping thus from the devil into the deep sea before they have taken time to see the Union in action, and test whether its policies are in fact so dangerous in their regard as to justify so desperate a jump. Those of their leaders who are not this realistic are bound to come to grief, from so great a defect in their judgment, and be replaced by wiser compatriots.

Secondly, there is no reason whatever to expect or fear that an Atlantic Union would follow any policy that would cause many, or any, of these nations to become satellites, protectorates or colonies of the Communist empires. If the Union's leaders were that unwise and that untrue to the very principles that led them to found it -- and if the people of Atlantica did not replace them at the next election with better men, the Union would deserve to lose.

Thirdly, there are at least three strong reasons -- military, material and moral -- to expect this Union to pursue a far wiser and more liberal policy toward the under-developed nations than any country normally follows, or is likely to follow, without Atlantic federation. The military reason is that the Union's much stronger defensive power would make it need allies less than does the United States, and therefore it should be more willing to help neutrals, with no strings attached to its aid. At the same time the huge economies on defense, which only federation permits, would make much greater public and private funds available. As we noted in Chapter 9, the former United States Budget Director, P. F. Brundage, has estimated that Atlantic unification, even in moderate degree, would save the United States at least $10 billion a year on defense. On this basis we estimated the saving for all the NATO nations would be nearly $13 billion annually. Part of this would no doubt go back to the citizens in tax reductions -- but that would increase the funds available for private investments. The other part might well go into the aid projects that are better handled on a public basis. Nor would these $13 billion a year be the only fresh resources that Union would bring to the solution of this problem.

Turn now to the material side of the question. The establishment of this Union would improve the economy of Atlantica to an incalculable degree by cutting costs and spurring action in industrial production, trade, agriculture, mining, transportation, finance, invention, science and education. It would do this (a) by eliminating the multitudinous barriers, waste efforts, uncertainties and vexations with which unlimited national sovereignty now hobbles all these activities in Atlantica, and (b) by replacing them with the greater efficiency, the sounder currency, the stronger confidence, the vaster and more economic mass production, and the immense stimulus to private enterprise -- and to thinking and acting on a grand scale which the achievement of political and economic Union would bring in every nation and in every economic sector.

We saw in Chapter 4 how immediate and immeasurable was the improvement in the economy of the Thirteen States, once they changed from confederation to Federal Union. But their economic assets were of a kind that could not benefit from Union half so much, or half so fast, as can those of Atlantica today. Not only would the Gross Union Product of Atlantica be much greater at the start than the sum total of the Gross National Products of the Atlantic nations now; it would grow at a faster rate thereafter. But this very growth would mean a better market for the other nations, both as regards the sale of their products and the purchase of goods from the Union. So astonishing is the prospective economic growth that union would bring Atlantica that Professor Maurice Allais, the noted French political economist whose book L'Europe Unie, won in 1960 the Grand Prize of the Atlantic Community in Paris, went so far as to assert in it:

The economic advantages the free nations would derive from this policy would far surpass those which they derive from the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

Moreover, the powerful attraction such a community of the free Atlantic countries would exercise by its very existence, its exceptional prosperity and the immense hope it would raise among men everywhere. would result in slow dissolution of the totalitarian world.2

The combination of stronger defense and greater production, both attained at much less cost than is possible otherwise, would provide the huge material means needed if the problems of the under-developed nations are to be tackled with any hope of success. By no other policy than Atlantic Union, in fact, can these nations, or we, find the vast means needed in the fast time required. Self-interest on both sides would suffice to assure that Union would result in much greater development of these countries. Such development through mutually advantageous trade would be much healthier than any help on a charity basis or on the political pressure basis that is inevitable where the economy is monopolized by the state, as it is in the Communist empires. The Atlantic Union could not realize its potentials in higher standards of production and living for its citizens without buying much more raw materials from Latin America, Africa and Asia than they can now supply -- and so it would have to help them develop themselves. Nor -- as we have already noted -- can they sell enough of their products in the Communist market, or in any other market except the Atlantic one, to finance themselves in this self-respecting way.

Now for the moral reason why one can be sure that an Atlantic Union would be vastly to the advantage of the under-developed countries. Consider its moral effects. Before a federation could be made by the people of the Atlantic nations in peacetime, there would have to be a profound moral revolution among them, particularly in the stronger ones. They must not merely overthrow the principle of unlimited national sovereignty, which now has such a stranglehold on them, but replace it with the opposite principle of citizen sovereignty. They must discard the notion that their nation is a law unto itself in its dealings with other peoples. They must begin to practice in some fields, with some nations, the democratic Rule of Law which they now practice only within their own boundaries. By that Rule, even the Sovereign Citizens do not claim to be above the Law. Union means they have put the Rights of Man above the Rights of Nations, that they seek to increase their own power over their government and lessen its power to interfere with their individual lives liberties, happiness. Union means they have shifted from fear of foreigners to faith in foreigners, and that they have begun to "love thy neighbor as thyself" in a far greater way than they, or any other nations, ever have done before. To achieve Union they must be moved by the deepest desire to live in peace that any people can have.

They must, in short, have attained broader understanding, deeper virtue and high spiritual standards than they have now -- or they will not peacefully agree to form an Atlantic Federal Union. It does not make sense to assume that a Union thus established is going to follow policies toward the under-developed nations that are not imbued with the same understanding, virtue and spirit that brought the Union into being -- let alone "gang up" against these peoples whom its Member Nations have already liberated peacefully. One can be sure that once the people of Atlantica cross the Rubicon separating unlimited national sovereignty from the citizen sovereignty of freedom-and-union, all their actions thereafter will be favorably affected by this moral revolution.

The moral effect on the under-developed nations, which the achievement of Atlantic Union will have, will be no less beneficial. The prestige that goes with strength and unexpected success made them look with more respect on Communism, once Moscow led with Sputnik. To achieve Atlantic Union in peace in the near future will be no less impressive -- a success, no less unexpected -- and the strength it will give to freedom will be much more immediate and down-to-earth. When the under-developed nations find that their fears, and Communism's propaganda, about the Union were unfounded, and realize what a boon its creation is to them, this pleasant surprise will attract them to it all the more. The example the Atlantic peoples have set in the past, in putting national sovereignty above all, has been followed in the Balkans, Central Europe, Asia, Africa. The example we Atlanticans will set, in putting the rights of men above the rights of nations when we form an Atlantic Union of the Free, should work a moral revolution, too, in all these other nations. So, too, should the fact that Union brings far greater strength to freedom than national sovereignty ever has. All this should also speed the evolution of these nations from unlimited national sovereignty to the realization of the dream of Latin American federation, African federation, Mideast federation and Southern Asian federation which the wisest leaders in these areas have cherished since the time of Bolivar -- thus far in vain.

Yeast in the Empires of the East

What of the yeast effect that Atlantic Union will have on the many peoples who are now held in the cruelest oppression by the Russian and Chinese empires -- many for centuries, some only for fifteen years or less? Certainly Moscow will have reason to fear the effect the mere creation of the Union of the Free will have on its Achilles heel -- the peoples of Eastern Europe. Unlike the rest of the Russian Empire, they have known in their lifetimes something better than Czarist and Communist despotism. Who are these peoples? They include the Poles whose extreme democratic instincts led them to the anarchy that was the source of their undoing when Kosziuscko fell and who remain the most dauntless, romantic fighters for freedom (with one exception).... And the East Germans, who only a few years ago stood up -- though armed only with stones -- against Russian tanks.... And the Balts who have kept alive their dream of renewed independence even longer.... And the Czechs and Slovaks who revere John Huss, and knew Mazaryk and Benes in the flesh.... And the Hungarians who in 1956 wrested from the Poles the title for incredible gallantry for freedom, ... And the stalwart peoples of the Balkans ... the Albanians who gave great heroes both to the Roman and Turkish empires ... the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes who, typically led in defying the thunders of Moscow ... the Rumanians who cannot forget their name which recalls the frontiers of Rome ... and the Bulgarians who, I am sure, respect their assassinated Stambouliski even more than I do still, although my acquaintance with him in the early 1920's as a foreign correspondent was all too short.

No empire has ever found these peoples of Eastern Europe easy to digest -- and when the achievement of Atlantic Union revives their hopes, they will give Moscow worse than ulcers. Nowhere will Atlantic Union, by its mere existence, have so strong a magnetic power so soon as in these peoples so many of whom cherish student memories of Paris and London, or family ties with the United States. It needs but exist to make them hope that they could become members of it, once they freed themselves. Hope can work wonders -- and we can not devise a greater wonder-worker than this Union would be to the oppressed in Eastern Europe ... and in the Russian and the Chinese empires.

It will exert a far greater attraction on them than European Union. They -- and especially the Poles and Czechs -- have cause to fear Germany. They dread that the Germans would soon dominate a European Union and lead it into adventures eastward. But there would be no possibility of the Germans dominating an Atlantic Union. The addition of the Americans, British, Canadians and Scandinavians to their friends in France and Benelux would make this Union of the Free the most positive attraction to them that is conceivable.

To Bring Dictatorship down Prom Within

Atlantic Union would also bring new hope, only to a less degree, to the Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians and the many other peoples whom the Czars conquered. Those who have suffered oppression longest are, of course, the Russian and the Chinese peoples themselves. I would not count on their throwing off their present oppressors soon -- but I would not be surprised if this followed the creation of the Union of the Free much sooner than others would expect. Certainly I would not lose faith in the future freedom of peoples who have shown the courage and resourcefulness of the Russians, and who have behind them so long and great a civilization as the Chinese -- and so many close ties with the people of Atlantica. The very intensity and persistence of the anti-American campaign in Communist China is to me strong proof that it is hard to kill the warm feeling that so many living Chinese have had so long for America as the land of freedom and their surest friend.

So long as the dictatorships in Russia and China fear to let their subjects hear two sides of basic questions with equal freedom, or freely choose between two parties, I shall conclude that they themselves have no confidence in the solidity of their regimes. There is much talk today of the difference in viewpoint on Communist doctrine between dictators Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung. This reminder that believers in anything are certain to divide on some things if they are free to do so, serves to point up the lack of confidence each dictator has in his own country. There are known to be Russian Communists who agree with Peiping's interpretation of Communism, and no doubt there are many Chinese Communists who still follow Moscow. But neither Moscow nor Peiping permits its domestic Communist opposition (let alone a Capitalist or Socialist opposition) to organize itself as a right wing or left wing Communist party and put its case freely before the people. While both Moscow and Peiping are afraid to let their people choose even between two brands of Communism, it would seem to me that their "monolithic unity" is built on sand, and that one need only await the right climate conditions to witness its inevitable fall.

By this, I do not mean war or any tough policy on our part. Every system has its inherent weakness which can bring it down from within. The basic weakness in our free system is the tendency to carry freedom to the point of anarchy. Communism does all it can to exploit this weakness and to help create the conditions in which the free peoples are most likely to divide against themselves to their mutual destruction. The corresponding inherent weakness in the Communist system is that it carries unity to the extreme degree of tyranny, which exposes it to the dangers of rigidity and corrosive, all-pervading suspicion. Its leaders do not trust their people, or even the rank-and-file in the Communist party; they distrust still more each other. This distrust is bound to be even greater between Moscow and Peiping, and between Moscow and Warsaw, and between Moscow and its viceroys in the other satellites. The restiveness and hope which the creation of an Atlantic Union would cause in Eastern Europe by giving new life to the American, English and French revolutions, would make both Moscow and its Kadars far more distrustful of the people they rule, and of each other. It would thus, willy-nilly, create the kind of "climate" in which mutual suspicion behind the Iron Curtain would be undermining most effectively the foundations of the rigid Communist structure.

Atlantic Union would also face Moscow with this dilemma: To hold its satellites then, it would have to make its rule either more oppressive or more liberal. The former course would cost it heavily in the outside world, serve to unite the Atlantic peoples more strongly, and increase the revolutionary pressure in Eastern Europe. The latter course would make it hard for Moscow to keep control of the satellites -- or to keep from liberalizing its rule in Russia, too. These examples may suffice to suggest the domestic dangers and difficulties which the mere creation of the Union of the Free would bring to the "monolithic" Empires of the East.

Our Fulfillment as Atlantic Citizens

Atlantic Union would enable us to fulfill ourselves as Atlanticans. This is perhaps the part of our personality that we have starved the most. We all do belong to the free community of Atlantica -- and in "we" and it I would include for present purposes such non-NATO peoples as the Australians, Austrians, Irish, New Zealanders, Swedes and Swiss -- but we do not yet acknowledge our love for it and our belonging to it, as we do for our nation. We show in many ways, however, that we are Atlanticans.

Most people in this community, when they travel or study abroad, do so in the other nations of Atlantica. Most of the "foreign" books, plays, works of art we like the most in each of our nations come from the other Atlantic nations. We do our "foreign" business mainly with the rest of Atlantica, and most easily. The "foreign" history we know best is their history -- and our own (no matter which our nation) closely interlocks with that of other Atlantic peoples. Most of our heroes and heroines lived in Atlantica. Our nations -- especially the English-speaking ones, but also the French, Belgians, Dutch, Italians -- are a mixture of Atlantic peoples. Inter-marriage is still greatest, most successful and most rewarding within our Atlantic community.

Each of our peoples thinks its own way of life is peculiar to it -- but the nearest approach to it each finds in other Atlantic nations. And so, whatever our nation may be, when we go abroad we feel most at home in other parts of Atlantica. We share more concepts and customs with each other than with others. When in Asia or Africa we find we Atlanticans naturally gravitate toward each other -- and Asians and Africans tend to lump us all together, whether favorably or unfavorably. When the freedom each of our peoples holds dearest is endangered in any of our nations, we turn most hopefully to each other for help, or for refuge. More than once most of us have fought together the battle of freedom. Actions, we all say, speak louder than words, and our actions say we all belong at heart to Atlantica. Why not say it then in words? And in votes -- hallmark of the citizen?

Atlantica -- the Country Without a Man

Why not fulfill the dreams of our Victor Hugos, our Goethes, our John Stuart Mills? Why not begin to answer by Atlantic Union the prayer that our Benjamin Franklin sent to a fellow Atlantican on the other side of the ocean on December 4, 1789 -- a few months after his thirty-five-year dream of uniting the Thirteen Colonies under a common free government had been achieved:

God grant that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough knowledge of the Rights of Man may pervade all the nations of the Earth so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface and say, "This is my Country."

Since then liberty has won all the peoples around the North Atlantic which Franklin crossed so often in its service. Yet still Americans, Britons, Frenchmen, and the other free peoples of Atlantica remain alien to each other in one respect -- politically. When they set foot on each other's soil they feel at home -- but do not say, as the dying philosopher prayed they would -- "This is my Country!" We have heard the story of the "Man without a Country," and we would wish no worse fate for anyone. Yet there can be something perhaps worse -- a country filled with millions of sovereign citizens of various nations, who act as if it belonged to them, but do not yet dare say they belong to it. There is only one such country now, and it is Atlantica.

This is the embodiment of ourselves which we Atlanticans still keep as Cinderella in the cellar -- and which Atlantic Union would bring to the ball and to Prince Charming. And what a true fairy tale of fulfillment that would be!

Consider how the different peoples of Atlantica supplement each other -- the French and the Germans, or the French and the British, or the British and the Italians or Germans, or the Dutch and Belgians, or the Greeks and Turks -- to mention no more examples in Europe. Consider, too, how the people of North America and those of Western Europe complement one another, as man and woman do. Consider how much they need each other to be their true selves.

Consider the marriage of Western Europe and North America, of the old in culture with the old in free self-government, of the new in so many arts and ideas with the new in so many practical things, of the lands where the outstanding building in town is a medieval church with the lands where the finest building in town is a public school ... Consider the interchange of teachers and students which now goes on among the fifty states of the United States, and project this on an Atlantic scale. How many more European young men and women will be studying in American colleges, and how many more Americans and Canadians will be having part of their education in Europe ... once they are all citizens of the Ocean of the Free!

Think of the cross-fertilization that would result in education, art, science, invention, business, philosophy, religion -- in being, in doing, in living, in loving ...

Think of the basic cross-fertilization, the inter-marriage of the young people of the European nations with each other, and of the Europeans with North Americans that would result from the political welding of their nations. Think of their children, who would have the advantage of starting life with two national heritages instead of one to draw on, and perhaps with two languages -- with keys to two great literatures acquired the easiest way ...

Children of Franco-German or Italo-American or of other such marriages are handicapped now with the conflict in loyalties that results from their having to subordinate one parent's national heritage to the other's. But the children of such marriages in an Atlantic Union would be hurt by no such inner conflict in their formative years. Instead, they would have the advantage of three loyalties and loves -- for the land of their father, for the land of their mother, and for the Union of the Free that their parents themselves had made, as fellow citizens, and added to their children's heritage.

Why Move from Fear When Faith Offers Us So Much?

When one thinks creatively even a little of these and other effects that flow from our embodiment of ourselves as sovereign citizens of Atlantica, one can not help but believe that from this Union would soon rise a far higher civilization than Man has yet attained, anywhere, any time. Our machines have already outdone the seven-league boots, Aladdin's Lamp, and other wonders of our fairy tales. In like manner the civilization that would follow our constitution of this new Atlantis would far surpass from every standpoint -- moral, material, artistic, scientific, spiritual humane -- that of the fabled Atlantis which Plato dreamed of, as a world swallowed up long before by the Atlantic -- not a world that could ever be.

Here is something now in our grasp that should spur us on much more than the fears and dangers that too long have been our major motive power. If fear has made many men outdo themselves, faith and hope in something better has led to much more prodigious feats. Not fear, but reasoned hope led Columbus to brave the Atlantic. Not fear, but faith in Mohammed's Paradise led the Arabs to make their obscure Mecca the Mecca of mankind from Afghanistan to Spain in less than eighty years.

No people ever had such cause for faith and hope as have we Atlanticans today -- or such means to turn them soon into reality. Let Mr. K get what strength he can from his hope of "burying" us, from his faith that our grandchildren will be Communists. We have far sounder reason to know that we need but fulfill ourselves now, as citizens of the Union of the Free, to assure our grandchildren -- and his -- the greatest blessings that Freedom-and-Union have ever brought to men.

Our Fulfillment as Nations

Atlantic Union would also mean the highest fulfillment of the nation we belong to, whichever one it may be. Here would be the peaceful reunion of most of the Hellenic and Roman worlds, and of that of Charlemagne. Here would come together again the Celts, Romans, Danes, Angles, Saxons and Normans who mixed to make the English people. This would reunite the Italians and French, the French and British, the British and Americans, the Americans and Canadians.

With Atlantic Union, the British invention of representative government would climb the highest political Everest in the range of Freedom. How that would please Burke, Mill, Bryce! The French would win for their Revolution's trinity -- Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité -- more than Napoleon dreamed of winning, and win it without a battle, with no retreat from Moscow, no Waterloo. How this would make Jeanne d'Arc rejoice, Voltaire and Lafayette! The Vikings would venture on their ocean as never before. The glories of the Dutch Republic -- and the ideals of Grotius -- would blossom anew, as would those of the Belgians to whom Caesar paid such tribute. Here the eternal dream of the Germans would be realized in the way that Goethe, Heine, Schiller would applaud. Here would be restored the Rule of Law that Italy first gave the West; here would be far more than Columbus dreamed of in Genoa. Here too would be the apogee of ancient Athens and of modern Ankara. By Atlantic Union, Canada would bring its British fatherland and French motherland to live in Union as their children do in Ottawa. And here the greatest of American inventions -- Federal Union -- would come to its finest flower ... in the peaceful, reasoned way the seed was created by Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Mason.

Every nation has developed a certain character, personality and genius of its own. Would not those of every Atlantic people be best fulfilled by a Federation of the Free that guaranteed to each nation its own independence in everything that was purely national, and yet gave it a better means of spreading its virtues to other nations, and replacing its vices with the virtues it could gain from them? Federation would give each nation possibilities it could not otherwise have to make experiments in the political, economic, social and other fields that interest it most, and by the success of its pilot plant lead the rest of the Union to follow it. The world's first experiment with woman suffrage was made in the sparsely peopled frontier state of Wyoming. From there it spread from state to state through the American Union, and also from nation to nation, around the world. This is but a hint of the innovations whose inauguration and whose spread (if successful) would both be fostered in all the nations an Atlantic Union federated. Their greater diversity would assure an even wider range of fruitful experiment than the fifty pilot plants have already provided the fifty United States.

Our Fulfillment as Persons

Above all we are each individuals. In all our other embodiments we are individual. Unions and nations and tribes can divide. Even the closest "plural" person -- marriage based on mutual love -- can be divided by death, or divorce. But though each of us feels often of two minds, of two hearts, none of us can divide himself and live. Each remains individual, the basic and supreme flesh-blood-and-soul reality in human life. No man can escape himself, each woman must always live with herself. And only you can fulfill yourself.

Consider for a moment how Atlantic Union would help its citizens to fulfill themselves better than they can now. One illustration may serve to stimulate the reader to paint more of this picture for himself.

In every field of life, Atlantic Union would open a much higher possibility of fulfillment to every citizen who is specially gifted or deeply interested in that particular field. Take statesmanship, as a typical example. In any Atlantic democracy now, any citizen, however small the town or humble the family he was born in, can hope to rise to the higher levels of government in his nation -- but no higher.

A Norwegian may be much more gifted as a statesman than the occupant of Downing Street or the White House, but the highest development of his gifts that he can hope for now is to be Prime Minister of some three million Norwegians. In an Atlantic Union he could become the Chief Executive of 471 million people. Such a Union would permit a gifted Senator from Greece to gain by sheer ability the influential role as regards Atlantic policy that young Senator Frank Church has already won in the United States Senate although he represents one of the least populous states, Idaho. Through an Atlantic Union a gifted Dutchman can gain the decisive power over Atlantic foreign policy that another Senator from Idaho, William Borah, once wielded over Washington's. Through Atlantic Union the gifted son of an obscure family in a forgotten trading post on Hudson Bay can have an even vaster opportunity than the American Union gave to a rail-splitter in a frontier village in Illinois -- and, if he has the stuff in him, he can serve freedom everywhere as nobly as did Lincoln.

From "Village Hampdens" to Atlantic Churchills

Now look at the other side of this picture. All the citizens of New Salem, and of Illinois, and of the United States, and all men everywhere who prize liberty-and-union, gained immensely from the fact that Lincoln was not limited to a sovereign city but could use his great gifts on a vaster stage. Atlantic Union gives us a still greater possibility of freeing the "man in a hundred million" -- the Lincoln of tomorrow -- to fulfill himself by serving individual liberty on the scale his gifts require, meeting the higher challenge that he was born to meet ... and cannot possibly meet in any Republic smaller than the Union of the Free.

Had Churchill or de Gaulle been born in an earlier century, their great potentialities would have limited them to some petty kingdom, long since forgotten. They could have been those "village Hampdens" whom Gray lamented in his Elegy:

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
      The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land ...
Their lot forbade ...

Because village kingdoms had already been painfully united into the British and French nations when Churchill and de Gaulle were born, they had a greater state to inspire them, a greater stage on which to develop their gifts, a greater service they could perform for a greater number of fellow citizens. If we -- and they -- now make the most of the opportunity they helped preserve for the free, England's next Churchill and France's next de Gaulle will be born citizens of Atlantica, too. They will start with a greater country to inspire and enable them to reach a higher plane of patriotism, and a deeper philosophy of freedom-and-union ... and widen further man's vast future.

Consider the possibilities of self-fulfillment resulting from the billions of dollars that Union would save on defense and the even huger amounts it would add to income by the economies of mass production on a scale nearly three times greater than that of the United States, unhampered by nationalism's costly barriers to business. Part of the saving on defense would go to the citizen in lower taxes, and he would reap nearly all the benefit from the increased prosperity. The taxpayers in each nation could spend those billions then on educating better their children -- and themselves -- and on health, travel, the arts ... and on helping their fellow man.

Nearly every citizen has at least one or two ideas for improving life that are dear to him or her. It may be a mechanical invention, one of the arts, a new process in manufacturing, a teaching program, a scientific theory, a spiritual or philosophic concept, or something else whose possibilities appeal to him. It may be one of the innumerable "good causes" that lead free people to join this or that private association, whose purpose somehow attracts them personally, so much more than others do, that they lie awake at night thinking how to help it get the funds, and members, and attention it needs.

There are innumerable foxholes in the fight against ignorance, poverty and disease and for the ever greater growth of body, mind and spirit. Freedom permits, and expects, every sovereign citizen to volunteer to fill whatever foxhole is most important to him. Since human beings are so richly diversified, the more freedom they have to choose the way they would fulfill themselves, the surer we can be that those myriad foxholes will be filled always by all the men and women who can best be depended on to hold and advance that sector. To increase the private income each of them has at his or her disposal is to permit each to develop his personality the more. Atlantic Union would help in this way, too.

It would also help by providing greater private funds on which colleges, churches, and private associations could draw in their efforts to raise funds to fight cancer or juvenile delinquency, to finance scholarships or missionaries, to exchange students or art exhibits, to help the blind child overcome his handicap and the budding genius to develop his potentialities, to advance peace, knowledge, wisdom, virtue, freedom. There are countless things that need doing, and that are struggling now for funds and volunteer workers. But the achievement of none of them would do half as much as would the achievement of Atlantic Union to help advance all the other causes that deserve support. Atlantic Union would free more money, more volunteers and more time, and would distribute these more effectively among all the foxholes of civilization, than would any other single change that is within the reach of the people of Atlantica today.

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  1. Acton, Historical Essays and Studies, 1908, p. 127.
  2. From a chapter in his book published in the September, 1960, Freedom & Union.

Contents -- Chapter 11 -- Chapter 13