THE UNDREAMED-OF DESIGN
by E.B. White


The name of the new peace organization is to be the United Nations. It is a misnomer and will mislead the people. The name of the organization should be the League of Free and Independent Nations Pledged to Enforce Peace, or the Fifty Sovereign Nations of the World Solemnly Sworn to Prevent Each Other from Committing Aggression. These titles are clumsy, candid, and damning. They are exact, however. The phrase "United Nations" is inexact, because it implies union, and there is no union suggested or contemplated in the work of Dumbarton Oaks. The nations of the world league will be united only as fifty marbles in a dish are united. Put your toe on the dish and the marbles will scatter, each to its own corner.

Wendell Willkie knew that a league of free countries is not a world government of united nations. He saw this and preached unity -- sometimes in a rather confused manner but with conviction and often with luster. His great phrase "One World" is his monument. His book wasn't a very good book, but it was an important book and will take its place on the permanent shelf of this groping, hopeful planet. Willkie understood that the price of world order is national sovereignty, and he dared say so right to his party's face. Before he died he accused both parties of holding out the false promise that "permanent or lasting peace can be attained without what is popularly called "loss of sovereignty." Where is the Republican or the Democrat who will take up from there?

A security league to keep the peace is a negative project and follows a negative pattern. Peace is not something to be kept, like a pet monkey; peace is the by-product of responsible government. The league of Dumbarton Oaks is already revealing its irresponsible character by designating some nations "peace-loving," some nations "big" -- as though we all enjoyed the services of a referee. But the league of Dumbarton Oaks, whatever we may think of it, is what we are to live with for a while. It is the symbol of our honorable intentions and the legitimate child of our delegated authority. It is the sort of temporary structure you see at a world's fair, made of wallboard and fireproof shingles, and there is nothing to stop us from dismantling it at any time and building something solid. These are great days, when anything can happen. Now, as Tom Paine said, is the seed-time of union.

A first step to prepare a seed-bed would be for believers in world government (and there are many groups in many countries) to close their ranks. Unless they themselves can unite, which should be a fairly simple task, they can hardly expect their nations to unite, which would be at best a very complicated one. Therefore we say, "Federalists of the world, unite!"

The more a man thinks about it, the more clearly he sees that the political world must keep pace with the scientific world. A security league, in an age of flight, is anomaly. Politically the shape of the new world must be the shape of penicillin and sulfa and blood plasma, the shape of the buzz bomb and the V-2 and the X-903, the shape of the mothproof closet and the shatter-proof glass and the helicopter with the built-in waffle iron. This is a shape to conjure with. Mr. Willkie gave us the design in two words. If we try to live with all these majestic and fantastic and destructive gifts of science in a political framework reminiscent of the one-hoss shay, in danger of being upset by the irresponsibilities of diplomacy and the delicate balances of regional alliances and the wistful vetoes of the accused, we will soon enough discover disaster. There is good reason to believe that if statecraft is again caught lagging ten jumps behind science, we will never crawl back to life again as we have done this time. What curious defect it is in us that we should endorse the supercharger and deny the supra-state!

The peace of Dumbarton Oaks is the best our leading men could devise. It is an honest try; we must believe that. It is the work of the ripe, the middle-aged, the experienced, the practical, attempting to repair the damage caused by the war fought by the callow, the young, the inexperienced, the dreamers. We would like to hear from these veterans of battle, these neophytes of peace. We wonder how satisfied they are with the security of national alignments and friendly juxtapositions and solemn pledges that the good shall police the bad. To match this war we need a peace of magnificent proportions and undreamed of design. We give only a hint: It must be in the shape of the letter "O," it must be in the shape of the terrestrial globes in the fifty separate state departments of the fifty separate nations called United.

Treating the Disease of Nationalism

What treatment is there for the disease of nationalism, a more troublesome disease at this point than cancer? The treatment is known, but not admired. There is a specific for nationalism. We use it every day in our own localities. The specific is government -- that is, law: that is, codification of people's moral desires, together with enforcement of the law for common weal. The specific comes in a bottle and is very expensive. The price is terrific -- like radium, only worse. The price is one ounce of pure sovereignty. Too expensive, say the elders of the tribe...

World government is an appalling prospect. Many people have not comprehended it (or distinguishes it from world organization). Many others, who have comprehended it, find it preposterous or unattainable in a turbulent and illiterate world where nations and economies conflict daily in many ways. Certainly the world is not ready for government on a planetary scale. In our opinion, it will never be ready. The test is whether the people will chance it anyway -- like children who hear the familiar cry, "Coming, whether ready or not!" At a Federalist convention the other day, Dean Katz of the University of Chicago said, Constitutions have never awaited the achievement of trust and a matured sense of community; they have been born of conflicts between groups which have found a basis for union in spite of deep suspicions and distrusts".

The only condition more appalling , less practical, than world government is the lack of it in this atomic age. Most of the scientists who produced the bomb admit that. Nationalism and the split atom cannot coexist in the planet.

Leadership is the thing, really. And we seem not to have it, anywhere in the world. Premier Stalin's speeches have been strictly jingo since the end of the war. President Truman carries a clipping about the "parliament of man" in his wallet, and keeps his pocket buttoned. It takes a small country like Egypt even to speak the dissenting words. The large countries speak more cautiously and circle around each other like dogs that haven't been introduced, sniffing each others' behinds and keeping their hackles at alert. The whole business of the bomb tests at Bikini is a shocking bit of hackle-raising, which is almost enough in itself to start a bitter fight in the crazy arena of amorphous fear. One scientist remarked the other day that the chances of the explosion's doing some irreparable damage to the world were one in a hundred septillion. Very good. And if there is one such chance, who can authorize the show? What is the name of the fabulous ringmaster who can play with the earth and announce the odds? There is no such character. The natives who were tossed off Bikini are the most distinguished set of displaces persons in the world, because they symbolize the displacement that will follow the use of atomic power for military purposes. If one atomic bomb goes off, in real earnest, the rest of us will leave our Bikinis for fair -- some in the heat of stars, some in the remains of human flesh in a ruined earth.

Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international co-operation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it. Where do human rights arise, anyway? In the sun, in the moon, in the daily paper, in the conscientious heart? They arise in responsible government. Where does security lie, anyway -- security against the thief, the murderer, the footpad? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in government. Where does control lie -- control of smoking in the theater, of nuclear energy in the planet?

Control lies in government, because government is people. Where there are no laws, there is no law enforcement. Where there are no courts, there is no justice.

A large part of the world is illiterate. Most of the people have a skin color different from the pink we are familiar with. Perhaps government is impossible to achieve in a globe preponderantly ignorant, preponderantly "foreign," with no common language, no common ground except music and childbirth and death and taxes. Nobody can say that government will work. All one can guess is that it must be given an honest try, otherwise our science will have won the day, and the people can retire from the field, to lie down with the dinosaur and the heath hen -- who didn't belong here either, apparently.


An American essayist and author, E. B. White created the New Yorker magazine's "Talk of the Town" section. He wrote a great many essays and children's books and won the Pulitzer Prize's special citation in 1978 for the body of his works, including Charlotte's Web. The editorials in his collection The Wild Flag directly address the subject of world government. This selection is dated 1944.

Send this page to a friend Click HERE to express your ideas at the World Beyond Borders message board. subscribe to our newsletter