Looking Forward

We are apparently moving forward at the same regular pace of years and seasons governed by the turning and orbital movement of the Earth which is our present home. But in our knowledge and the circumstances of our lives we are hurtling forward with ever increasing momentum. We arc driving headlong towards world unity. Some of us, the pioneers, have gone further than others; but all of us inexorably are being carried along into what will be the real beginning of civilisation, the age in which war will be abolished. We have not yet got rid of war, but the fright of the hydrogen bomb has started to teach us that we have to. We must hope that we shall require no sterner warning. A great deal now depends on the rapidity with which we can adapt our thinking, especially our social and political thinking, to the requirements of the coming time. If disaster comes it will be through the failure of those who formulate policy and make decisions at all levels to advance from their old positions. Youthfulness of imagination and flexibility of judgement has become indispensable to survival. In this respect some octogenarians are far more agile and adventurous than those with less than half their years. That is because they have personally witnessed and experienced the rate at which change is taking place.

Within a few decades the whole world will be under continual observation from artificial satellites. All parts of the planet will be in instantaneous visual contact, and physically reachable in a few hours. Atomic fission will be providing a superabundance of cheap fuel and power. Automation will be lowering hours of labour. There will be many other striking alterations in the pattern of social and political existence of which we already have some indications. It is folly to believe that the forms of organised corporate life as we know them today will indefinitely continue, and it is our duty to those who will come after us to foresee as far as we can what will be the effect of present scientific and technical developments when they come into full force. It is our business to plan, so that the transformation can take place with a minimum of friction and dislocation. This is where the advocates of World Federal Government are partly right and partly wrong. They are right in anticipating a world that is functioning as a unity, but wrong in supposing that the way in which it is governed as a whole will necessarily correspond to any system now in operation over a limited area. Doubtless every system that has been tried out will have something to contribute, for there is bound to be a certain continuity of ideas and practices. But there will also be features that are quite novel arising from unprecedented conditions and requirements. This has been evident in our own time, when we have created a League of Nations and a United Nations Organisation with characteristics in some respects startlingly at variance with previous concepts of international relations.

Political State machinery is rather cumbersome and slow-moving, and the human mind inevitably runs ahead of it, and must do so, if there is to be progress and improvement. If the machine is called upon for a spurt it is liable to break down or crack up. Then there is war or bloody revolution. A new machine has hurriedly to be built or improvised from pieces of different machines. We had the League only because of World War One. We had the United Nations only because of World War Two. Must we have World Unity only because of the supreme smash of a Third World War?

This is not necessary. As the State machine cannot move fast enough to keep pace with the present rate of change, we can construct a lightly built mobile machine not bedded in the concrete of territory, which can scout ahead and explore and report back. We can employ an agency that is sufficiently Statelike, yet not a State, to experiment in world unity and fresh forms of community living. In this way inevitable change will be robbed of its terrors, since it will first take place on the harmless proving ground provided by the Commonwealth of World Citizens. And even so, there is no compulsion. It will be at the discretion of every government whether or not it makes use of the knowledge freely placed at its disposal.

On the other hand the Commonwealth will be able to act for all States in the character of a World Development Authority which is now being widely advocated. All great Powers, and a good many small ones, in varying degrees are increasingly playing the part of World Citizens. That is to say, they are giving technical and material help to countries in need because it is the right thing to do, and not because they gain something by it. Some of this aid is direct. Some of it is canalised through the Specialised Agencies of the U.N. and through the World Bank. But there still needs to be built up a Mutual Aid clearing house to devise, to co-ordinate, and to carry out programmes. It seems only natural that for such World Citizen work an impartial World Citizen Agency should be employed. It would be almost impossible for the States to create this; but they could thankfully use it when it is created for them. '

With the Commonwealth of World Citizens there comes into being an adjunct to international organisation which can be serviceable in a hundred ways. That is why it is being constituted, to serve. That there should be found throughout the world in our day and generation a nucleus of ordinary men and women with this spirit in them is surely a happy augury for the future. It lights up the whole sombre landscape of our fortunes with a smile.