Step Closer, Folks

The Harvard "Union Now" Committee met in Eliot House Common Room last night, but Hitler and Mussolini met in the Alps five months ago. The Committee hopes that it can stir up enthusiasm for Streit's inter-democracy union by broad-casting the ideals of the plan,--the end of war and depression and the widening of individual liberties. Apparently, however, the members of the Committee have been spending their time reading "Union Now" pamphlets and have neglected current headlines. They cannot hope to sell Streit's plan by stressing its sure peace angle when the war is getting bloodier every day. If they expect to get any support, they need a plan that is stream-lined and new-lined to the present.

The new line that will have to be tossed to the Cambridge carp will have to include the practicality of the plan under present conditions. As things stand now, the adoption of a federal union of the remaining democracies means nothing less than immediate war for the United States, something that George Gallup has just proved quite unpopular.

As an outline of a possible post-war reconstruction, the Streit plan is useful. The League of Nations' failure has often, and probably rightly, been blamed on American non-participation. This war--and this peace--the nation may think differently. Even the limited intervention to which we are already committed has provoked much critical thinking about the type of world order which permits war twice in a quarter-century.

But as an immediate solution of anything, Union Now is satisfactory only to the interventionists. Its wider adoption will have to await the disposition of the more immediate question of war and peace. To hide that fact is to play a shell-game with the American people.