A Political Optimist

DESPITE all the efforts of Adolf Hitler and Samuel Crowther, some people still seem to believe in the possibility of internationalism. One of these misguided seuls is David Mitrany, an English journalist and publicist, whose red beard and penetrating mind were the envy of Winthrop House and the Government Department for the two years recently spent in our midst. In "The Progress of International Government", his Dodge lectures at Yale, Mr. Mitrany gives an interesting historical and philosophical view of internationalism.

He is particularly anxious to give a stirrup-cup to the political theory of the Nationalist order of things. The happy result of this emphasis on things theoretical is that the Fascist reader can contentedly describe the volume as bunk, the internationally minded Socialist can contentedly read about the development of a world "communal organization", and the old school liberal can contentedly pore over an internationalism based on natural law and democracy. Even the critic can contentedly point to inconsistencies like the building up of an analogy between the individual citizen under municipal law and the individual state under international law, which is explained away when no longer useful.

Perhaps the best part of the book is the hurried but interesting discussion of what might be called administrative phases of international organization. The Coudenove-Kalergi theory of continental internationalism is utterly demolished, but a sensible functional devolution of international activity is proposed to take its place. Emphasis is justly laid on the atmosphere of technical cooperation as a surer route to internationalism than the pathway of political ideas. The need for international force is sanely handled; a modified method of representation of small nations in the League Assembly is proposed. If one views the present era of economic nationalism from the alarmist point of this is of course all drivel.

If one views the present era as an interlude in the development of internationalism, an Articles of Confederation time in the history of the world state, Mr. Mitrany's well written thoughts are worth a few hours. Minorities as safeguards are commended. "Here we see actually at work the new tendency of international law to go beyond the State and make the individual human being the object of its solicitude". That the desire for international functional administration outruns performance of legal mechanisms is brought into clear relief.