ORGANIZATIONS: The Old & the Slow

Some very young convention delegates wandered around the University of Chicago last week, scuffing through the fallen leaves, hands in pockets, deep in thought. It was a critical time for them and for the world.

Their organization, the Student Federalists (a tender shoot of Clarence Streit’s Federal Union), was divided. Should they be practical and accept the United Nations as a step toward their goal? Or should they denounce U.N. as inadequate and demand immediate acceptance of their goal: the federation of the world?

The delegates—150 of them, representing the four-year-old Student Federalists’ 3,100 members—came from U.S. colleges and high schools. The majority were from the once-isolationist Midwest. Juanita Will, bright-eyed and 18, from New Paltz, N.Y., had won the American Legion medal for being the best history student in her high school. Juanita arrived by airplane, a little pale from being airsick.

In U. of C.’s International House, they held their round-table discussions, listened to lectures for seven days. They had one singing session (poorly attended) and one dance. They stuck to their business : the world to which they were heirs.

One delegate shrilled in committee: “Potentially all of us here are revolutionists.” Said a fellow committeeman: “Well, would you rather have that or be fried by some radioactive atoms?”

They listened to 43-year-old Philosopher Mortimer Adler warn coldly: “I don’t think we can have a world government before the next war. . . . We will have to think in terms of working [for world government] beyond the next war and possibly one more beside that.”

They listened to blunt, 51-year-old Economist Beardsley Ruml: “The moral and psychological basis for world government does not exist.” They listened as 64-year-old Thomas K. Finletter, onetime special assistant to the Secretary of State, kindly urged Juanita and her colleagues to accept “a limited world government” as their immediate aim.

Juanita observed: “Old people want to work slowly.”

Young people have to work slowly too. They decided not to take any stand beyond proposing world government some time (perhaps in 50 years, thought newly elected president Coky Prentice). With plenty of optimism the 150 went back to their schools to strengthen their ranks.