We live in an age of crises. One crisis follows
another, and even when there is some kind of peace, it is a troubled peace with
fear of war and preparation for war. Tortured humanity hungers for real peace,
but some evil fate pursues it and pushes it farther away from what it desires
most. Almost it seems that some terrible destiny drives humanity to
ever-recurring disaster. We are all entangled in the mesh of past history and
cannot escape the consequences of past evil.
The only way out of this impasse seems to be one
world Government. World Government must, and will, come for there is no other
remedy for the world’s sickness. The machinery for it is not difficult to
devise. It can be an extension of the federal principle, a growth of idea underlying
the United Nations, giving each national unit freedom to fashion its destiny
according to its genius, but subject always to the basic covenant of the world
government.
It is obvious that if we want to abolish robbery,
violence and killing as between nations, we must do the same thing for nations
as has been done for individuals, i.e., to establish the rule of law over them.
Abolition of war required that when two nations have a difference which they
cannot settle in a friendly way by agreement, they should be complied to accept
an impartial decision-to arbitrate
Instead of fight, there must be an authority above them all.
There must be an International Court of Justice. There must be force acting under
International orders, a policeman to enforce the decisions of that court of justice.
So in order to keep law and order in the world
there must be the Court and the policeman. The scales of justice are vain
without there sword. To get rid of war we must establish a positive alternative
to war as a means of settling disputes between nations which they cannot
compose by agreement between themselves, to make certain that this positive
alternative of arbitration is adopted in every case we must have a world authority
above all nations as the national State has power over all citizens.
Now such a world authority will certainly mean some
abandonment of absolute sovereignty of nations, which it present means that
every nation is a law to itself, entitled Tony to get its own way not only at
home, but in all its dealings with other nations with its own force, if it can.
But a world authority for peace will not mean loss of national self-government
or national freedom, it will simply limit, what may be called, the anarchic
sovereignty of nations.
Just as the freedom of every individual citizen is
increased, not diminished, by the fact that he has to live under law, the same would
hold for nations under world government ‘A citizen may sometimes think that he
has too many laws, but without going into the details of particular laws, it is
clear that the freedom of the individual to go about his business without fear
of his being stabbed in the back or robbed at any moment, depends upon the fact
that he lives under the rule of law. In the same manner the nations under world
government would shave more freedom not less freedom, if war were abolished and
replaced by international justices enforced at need by an authority above all
nations, great and small.
The idea of one-world government has met with great
opposition from several quarters. Some of the political thinkers consider it to
be impossibility, a mere illusion. They are of the opinion that virtually all
arguments for world government rest upon the simple presupposition that the
desirability or world order proves the attainability of world government. Our
precarious situation is unfortunately no proof either of the moral ability of
mankind to create a world Government by an act of will, or of the political
ability of such a government to integrate a world community in advance of a
more gradual growth of the social tissue’ which every community requires more
than government.
The further argue that most advocates of world
government also assume that nations need merely follow the alleged example of
the individuals of another age who are supposed to have achieved community by
codifying their agreements into law and by providing an agency of some kind for
law enforcement. This assumption they point out, ignores the historic fact that
the natural respect for each other’s rights in a particular community is older
than any code of law, and that machinery’ for the enforcement of law can he
efficacious only when a community as a whole obeys its laws implicitly, so that
coercive enforcement may be limited to a recalcitrant minority.
According to, them the fallacy of world government
can be stated into two simple propositions. The first is that governments are
not created by ‘fat though sometimes they can be imposed by tyranny. The second
is that governments have only a limited efficacy integrating a community. The
advocates of world Government talk of calling a world constitutional order and
would then call upon the I nations to abrogate or abridge their sovereignty in
order that this newly created universal sovereignty could ha e unchallenged
sway. No such explicit abnegation has ever taken place in history. Explicit
government authority has developed historically from the implicit authority of
patriarchal or matriarchal forms. Governments, so established have extended
their dominion over weaker neighbours. But the abridgement of sovereignty has
always been indirect rather than direct or it has been imposed by the
superimposition of power.
In spite of these serious objections to the idea of
One-World Government, it is worth while planning and working for it, because if
it cannot be achieved humanity peace with fear of war and preparation for war.
Tortured humanity hungers for real peace, but some evil fate pursues it and
pushes it farther away from what it desires most. Almost it seems that some
terrible destiny drives humanity to ever-recurring disaster. We are all
entangled in the mesh of past history and cannot escape the consequences of
past evil. Desires most. Almost it seems that some terrible destiny drives
humanity to ever-non-recurring. We are all entangled in the mesh of past history
and cannot escape the consequences of past evil.
H.G. Wells, who was a staunch supporter of
One-World Government, and who considered it as the next stage in history,
discussing the advantages that would accrue to mankind such a move, has rightly
observed in. his famous outline of History. “There can be little question that
the attainment of a federation of all humanity, together with a sufficient
measure of social justice, ensure health, education and rough equality of
opportunity to most of the children born into the world, would mean such a
release and increase of human energy as to open a new phase in human history.
The enormous was caused by military preparations
and the mutual annoyance of competing great powers and the still more enormous
waste due to the under-product Inverness of great masses of people, either
because they are too wealthy for stimulus or too poor for efficiency, would
cease. There would be a vast increase in the supply 61 human necessities, a
rise in the standard of life and is what is considered a necessity, a
development of transport and every kind of convenience, and a multitude of
people would be transferred from low-grate production to such higher work, as
art of all kinds, teaching scientific research, and the like. All over the
world there would be setting free of human capacity such as has occurred hither
only in small places and through precious limited phases of prosperity and
security.
“To picture to ourselves come thing of the wider
life that world unity would-open to men is a very attractive speculation. Life
will certainly go with a stronger pulse; it will breathe a deeper breath,
because it will have dispelled and conquered a hundred infections of body and
mind and now reduce it to invalidism and squalor. W already laid stress on the
vast elimination of drudgery - form.