This movement need not at once intervene in politics. It is a prospective movement, and its special concern will be with young and still growing minds. But as it spreads it will inevitably change politics. The nations, states, and kingdoms of to-day, which fight and scheme against each other as though they had to go on fighting and scheming for ever, will become more and more openly and manifestly merely guardian governments, governments playing a waiting part in the world, while the world state comes of age. For this World State, for which the world is waiting, must necessarily be a fusion of all governments, and heir to all the empires.
So far I have been occupied by establishing a case for the World State. It has been, I fear, rather an abstract discussion. I have kept closely to the bare hard logic of the present human situation.
But now let me attempt very briefly, in the barest outline, some concrete realization of what a World State would mean. Let us try and conceive for ourselves the form a World State would take. I do not care to leave this discussion with nothing to it but a phrase which is really hardly more than a negative phrase until we put some body to it. As it stands World State means simply a politically undivided world. Let us try and carry that over to the idea of a unified organized state throughout the world.
Let us try to imagine what a World Government would be like. I find that when one speaks of a World State people think at once of some existing government and magnify it to world proportions. They ask, for example, where will the World Congress meet; and how will you elect your World President? Won't your World President, they say, be rather a tremendous personage? How are we to choose him? Or will there be a World King? These are very natural questions, at the first onset. But are they sound questions? May they not be a little affected by false analogies? The governing of the whole of the world may turn out to be not a magnified version of governing a part of the world, but a different sort of job altogether. These analogies that people draw so readily from national states may not really work in a world state.
And first with regard to this question of a king or president. Let us ask whether it is probable that the world state will have any single personal head at all?
Is the world state likely to be a monarchy—either an elective short term limited monarchy such as is the United States, or an inherited limited monarchy like the British Empire?
Many people will say, you must have a head of the state. But must you? Is not this idea a legacy from the days when states were small communities needing a leader in war and diplomacy?
In the World State we must remember there will be no war—and no diplomacy as such.
I would even question whether in such a great modern state as the U.S.A. the idea and the functions of the president may not be made too important. Indeed I believe that question has been asked by many people in the States lately, and has been answered in the affirmative.
The broad lines of the United States constitution were drawn in a period of almost universal monarchy. American affairs were overshadowed by the personality of George Washington, and as you know, monarchist ideas were so rife that there was a project, during the years of doubt and division that followed the War of Independence, for importing a German King, a Prussian Prince, in imitation of the British Monarchy. But if the United States were beginning again to-day on its present scale, would it put so much power and importance upon a single individual as it put upon George Washington and his successors in the White House? I doubt it very much.
There may be a limit, I suggest, to the size and complexity of a community that can be directed by a single personal head. Perhaps that limit may have been passed by both the United States and by the British Empire at the present time. It may be possible for one person to be leader and to have an effect of directing personality in a community of millions or even of tens of millions. But is it possible for one small short-lived individual to get over and affect and make any sort of contact with hundreds of millions in thousands of towns and cities?
Recently we have watched with admiration and sympathy the heroic efforts of the Prince of Wales to shake hands with and get his smile well home into the hearts of the entire population of the British Empire of which he is destined to become the "golden link." After tremendous exertions a very large amount of the ground still remains to be covered.
I will confess I cannot see any single individual human head in my vision of the World State.
The linking reality of the World State is much more likely to be not an individual but an idea—such an idea as that of a human commonweal under the God of all mankind.
If at any time, for any purpose, some one individual had to step out and act for the World State as a whole, then I suppose the senior judges of the Supreme Court, or the Speaker of the Council, or the head of the Associated Scientific Societies, or some such person, could step out and do what had to be done.
But if there is to be no single head person, there must be at least some sort of assembly or council. That seems to be necessary. But will it be a gathering at all like Congress or the British Parliament, with a Government side and an opposition ruled by party traditions and party ideas?
There again, I think we may be too easily misled by existing but temporary conditions. I do not think it is necessary to assume that the council of the World State will be an assembly of party politicians. I believe it will be possible to have it a real gathering of representatives, a fair sample of the thought and will of mankind at large, and to avoid a party development by a more scientific method of voting than the barbaric devices used for electing representatives to Congress or the British Parliament, devices that play directly into the hands of the party organizer who trades upon the defects of political method.
Will this council be directly elected? That, I think, may be found to be essential. And upon a very broad franchise. Because, firstly, it is before all things important that every adult in the world should feel a direct and personal contact between himself and the World State, and that he is an assenting and participating citizen of the world; and secondly, because if your council is appointed by any intermediate body, all sorts of local and national considerations, essential in the business of the subordinate body, will get in the way of a simple and direct regard for the world commonweal.
And as to this counciclass="underline" Will it have great debates and wonderful scenes and crises and so forth—the sort of thing that looks well in a large historical painting? There again we may be easily misled by analogy. One consideration that bars the way to anything of that sort is that its members will have no common language which they will be all able to speak with the facility necessary for eloquence. Eloquence is far more adapted to the conditions of a Red Indian pow-wow than to the ordering of large and complicated affairs. The World Council may be a very taciturn assembly. It may even meet infrequently. Its members may communicate their views largely by notes which may have to be very clear and explicit, because they will have to stand translation, and short—to escape neglect.
And what will be the chief organs and organizations and works and methods with which this Council of the World State will be concerned?