This Earth One Country/Preface
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PREFACE
Aw Eneuisu philosopher and jurist, Jeremy Bentham, in the year 1780, introduced into the English language what was then the strange word “international.” This word remained confined to legal studies until comparatively recent times. According to A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles there was not enough internationalism in the world to cause it to appear in print before 1877. But within a few decades it had become a common word, its meaning understood by the common man.
Events culminating in two devastating world wars are forcing a change in our outlook. The international community in which nations now live presents gigantic and immediate problems that no form of isolation can solve. The League of Nations failed to establish a peaceful and progressive international society. Failure revealed its greatest weakness, for it has shown that an international community composed of sovereign states cannot prosper. The need for an international authority appears obvious. We have learned at stupendous human and material cost that the nation-state is not the last word in man’s political evolution.
The problem of our age is the problem of world order. The need is written large in misery, death, and ruin. We cannot meet this need solely by a political or economic plan. Politics and economics are phases of the larger problem: can we evolve a world society which will bring the greatest good to
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the greatest number? Can the vision of democracy be translated into workable planetary terms?
The word “international” adequately described the growing closeness of modern nations. “Supranational” may well be the new term to apply to the kind of world society which will best serve the good of mankind.
A world government, a supranational government, is the ultimate goal from the point of view of the needs of the people. But to work towards this, a new world-ethic is required. Such an ethic must be idealistic in its emphasis upon humanity, and practical in its ability to lessen the great divisions which keep men apart.
This book does not contain a new utopia, nor does it propose another postwar plan. Its aim is to draw the reader’s attention to the existence of a supranational community with a plan already agreed upon, which is being put into execution on a world-scale.
I refer to a world community now functioning in many lands. It consists of people of all classes, races, and creeds, who have successfully eradicated the consciousness of an inbred, traditional race superiority and the subtle consciousness of class distinction so poisonous in human relations. To this group of people, religious snobbishness and the consciousness of color, as barriers between men, are foreign. Their future is inextricably linked with a travailing world — which, from trial to trial, is irresistibly moving towards its appointed destiny: a supranational community.
The opening chapter explores the economic problems of an
intricately organized world. It shows that the postwar era
will have to be appraised by the extent to which it can
transform national economy for power into a planetary
economy for welfare. The second chapter inquires into the
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political problems of an interdependent society, the international institutions of which have broken down. The third chapter tries to point to the basic reason for that breakdown. In order to cite a great experiment in civilization outside the immediate experience of western culture, the fourth chapter makes use of Islam as an example. The remainder of the book deals with the subject proper: a supranational community.