I must now say something about how the Commonwealth of World Citizens originated. This I am in the best position to do, since it was in my own mind that the plan was born. In the Thirties we were all reacting in one way or another to the menace of the Master-Race concept as currently expressed in Nazism, Fascism and State-Shintoism. There was a horrible pitilessness and bestial use of mass-psychology in these power-drunk systems which did far more than shatter peace: they overturned sanity. It was as if an evil and malignant spirit stalked the earth broadcasting the germs of a hideous political disease. All democratic peoples were afraid of it. The League of Nations was helpless before it. It was a sickness so dire that it seemed as if only a spiritual means in complete contrast could wholly conquer it. It appeared to me that there had to be summoned not force to meet force, not power to combat power, but the much stronger unarmed and despised weak things of the world, love, compassion, and selfless service. I conceived the coming among men of a Servant-Nation, the very antithesis of domination and aggression. That was in 1938. And neither the war itself, nor the state of affairs that has followed it, has in any way changed my conviction.

I imagined the Servant-Nation as 'a people to serve all peoples', composed of individuals drawn from every land, willing to accept the responsibility of being true World Citizens. That is to say, their primary loyalty would be given to mankind as a whole, and to every part of humanity without distinction or discrimination. The new people would be distributed throughout the world, yet functioning as a people under its own form of government suited to its character and purpose. It would be without armed force, without a territorial homeland, entirely impartial, in itself a demonstration of world unity, contributing to the welfare of every State.

Inherent in the basic thinking was the evident requirement that there should be an agency in the world which everyone could trust, and none had cause to fear, that such an agency might serve by consent in a mediatorial capacity, helping to heal wounds, and bridge gulfs. Further, it should be a kind of conscience to the world, a soul within the body politic. It should be the guinea-pig of fruitful experiments in community, enabling all countries to profit by the results. It should be the channel through which the nations could help one another without risk of the accusation of economic or political self-interest. It should be the means of adding to the productivity of the world by reclaiming deserts and waste places. In every way it should act in the interests of the general and individual good, yet without any coercive power.

But why need the agency be a people? And would it not be duplicating the work of the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations and other existing bodies ? The agency had to be a people so that its example would be valid for peoples, and so that its relations with States could be that of equals with full recognition of its independent status. Far from duplicating the work of the Specialised Agencies, it would operate very largely with them and through them, increasing their quality of disinterestedness and world-mindedness, and thus their value. The more that actual World Citizens were associated with world welfare agencies, the more respect would there be for their strict impartiality.

Naturally there was a great deal to be thought out and worked out, and it took the ten years from 1940 to 1950 for preparatory studies to be made of many aspects of the enterprise. These researches were conducted through the Service-Nation Movement, which from 1946 to 1950 was incorporated in the World Citizenship Movement. When it was decided in 1950 to proceed with the creation of the Commonwealth of World Citizens, as the new people was named, the broad lines of its policy and structure were already settled.