THE PASSING OF THE NATION 29 28 THE CLASS STRUGGLE We seem to have reached this, the final stage in the evolution towards internationalism, at least in the form of supernationalism.
In this connection, another book deserves our attention a book written about the same time as Naumann Middle Europe, and as remarkable in its way as the work of the noted German scholar and publicist. refer to Professor Roland Usher Pan Americanism. In conception and purpose the two books are entirely dissimilar. Dr. Naumann book is a fervid plea for the creation of the super state Central Europe. Prof. Usher book is an emphatic argument against the creation of the superstate Pan America. Nevertheless, the two books supplement each other in any study of present day thoughtful and scholarly opinion on the subject of nationalism and internationalism. And Prof. Usher book in its opposition to the particular super state of which he treats is as much a document evidencing the passing of the nationa state as is Dr. Naumann its eloquent plea for the one which he advocates.
In speaking of the necessary organs of the contemplated bodypolitic under consideration by him, Prof. Usher says. If the foundations of the structure are significant, the structure itself is the visible and tangible evidence of the existence of the new entity, and will be, if anything, more essential to its eventual success than the premises. An organic union would have little strength and possess only a very small quantity of organic nexus, unless it was at least a confederation of sovereign states, with a common executive and legislature, in whom were vested definite if, perhaps, limited powers to act, and with discretion to decide upon their own initiative, in a way binding upon all members certain matters of mutual interest explicitly delegated to them. Some common administrative body would be essential. The conduct of foreign affairs by the Confederation, the abandoning by all members of their previous policies and independent dealings with other countries, with either the abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine, or its assumption by the confederation, would be highly important. Free trade within the confederation and a uniform tariff against foreign countries, a uniform currency, uniform weights and measures, with uniform banking, bankruptcy, and commercial laws, would be eminently desirable. The courts of the confederation should decide suits between states or between the citizens of various states, as the United States courts now deal with the affairs of individuals and states. There would of course be taxes for purposes of administration and defense. These do not seem to be excessive demands or prerequisites of a closer Pan American Union. They mean simply that the new confederation should be a state with organs possessed of independent authority; that the political, administrative, and economic aspects of the new state should be realities and not fictions. They demand that the new state should actually possess the political and economic independence, that its assumed isolation and divergent interests from Europe would make desirable, and to preserve which the union itself had presumably been formed.
Now, a generation or two ago when political nationalism, the idea of the national state, was still the ruling political philosophy, the very statement of such an idea as the Pan American Union outlined by Prof. Usher would have been sufficient to condemn it. There would have been no necessity to write a book against it, for no one who could be taken seriously could have seriously proposed it. The matter was then simply not arguable. The answer to such a proposition, if made, was ready, short and decisive, Pan America is not a nation. There is no Pan American nation, and there can therefore be no Pan American state. There may be such hybrid and unnatural things in the old world, the remnants of an old and, happily, passing order, held together against the will of its people by the overpowering force of an autocratic government. But that free peoples should of their own free will deliberately create such a monstrosity, particularly on this free continent of America impossible! The idea that a free nation would curtail its own sovereign powers, its own sovereign legislature and independent executive, not to mention