Union Now
by Clarence Streit

During the first part of the twentieth century, Clarence Streit was uniquely positioned as an observer and commentator on international relations. From a World War I foot soldier he was appointed an aide to the U.S. mission to the Versailles Peace Conference following the war. Later he became an international correspondent for The New York Times , covering international affairs in Europe , including the activities of the League of Nations . By 1939, discouraged by the inadequacies of the international system to avoid the Depression and the coming World War II, he published Union Now , the first of a series of books calling for the leading democratic nations to unite. A proposal for a federal union of the democracies, Union Now advocated the gradual growth of a democratic world federation as a means of forestalling the possibility of future wars. In 1940, a year later, Streit founded the Association to Unite the Democracies , then called Federal Union, Inc., a non-profit organization committed to the burgeoning federalist movement influenced by his timely book. Streit offered the federal union as a method of defending the free world against totalitarian regimes with an expectation that they could eventually become integrated members of the union once they were replaced with democratic movements rooted in freedom. The proposal received wide acclaim and many great leaders of the time endorsed the idea: George Marshall, Harry Truman, Charles De Gaulle, and Robert Schumann were among Streit's supporters.

This book, in its entirety, is available for viewing on the web. For Book 1, A Proposal for a Federal Union of the Democracies of the North Atlantic, click here. Or for Book 2, A Proposal for an Atlantic Federal Union of the Free, click here.

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