The Functional Approach to World Organization

IT seems to be the fate of all periods of transition that reformers are more ready to fight over a theory than to pull together on a problem. At this stage I can only ask to be given credit for the claim that I do not represent a theory. I represent an anxiety. At home, when we want change or reform, we state our objecti'ves in such terms that all may see how we may attain them. When it comes to the international world, where we are faced with old and stubborn habits of mind and feeling and political dogmas, where the change we have in mind must close one of the ponderous tomes of history and open up a new one, it seems that nothing will do but the perfect goal and winged results. If we compare the general mood of 1919, when everybody was keen to get back to what had gone before, with the mood of 1948 one generation later, when the need for an active international society is almost universally taken for granted-we are justified in regarding the change as progress indeed; a change in outlook without which all schemes for international peace would, as in past centuries remain but noble dreams. Yet, even with that change, present schemes may likewise remain noble dreams if they are beyond the reach of the ways and means of human government. "Government is a practical thing," Burke wrote to the Sheriffs of Bristol, and we should beware of elaborating political forms "for the gratification of visionaries." It is the task of experts, whether individuals or groups, to pass now beyond fine appeals and ideal formulae. Expert vagueness will merely result in popular vacuousness. If that popular receptiveness to the idea of international organization is to ripen into an informed public opinion, it must now be fed with a diet of hard facts and practicable measures, so that it may know how to press and support Governments in the pursuit of an active international policy. How otherwise can it be explained why, with such broad goodwill and sense of urgency, so little has been fulfilled? The general outlook, therefore, is promising. When we come to examine present trends more concretely, two stand out above all-the trend for national self-government, and the trend for radical social change. The two are at work in different strengths in different parts of the world, but they merge into each other. Even in Europe, where state-making seems near to completion, the transformation of society is taking place on a national basis; while in the Middle East, in South-East Asia and elsewhere, the new States express social revolution as much as political revolution. Speaking internationally, therefore, there is in this social nationalism or national socialism an actual danger of regression. The modern political trend has led increasingly to the splitting