DEPARTMENT OF STATE Memorandum of Conversation
Date: April 12, 1949 2:30 p.m.
Subject: Limited World Government
Participants: The Secretary Laurence Lombard, Congressman John W. McCormack formerly WPB Henry B. Cabot Albert Pratt, formerly on staff Charles A. Coolidge, Fellow of Harvard on staff of Admiral Nimitz John Crider, Editor, Boston Herald Stuart Rand, former Chairman, Michael T. Kelleher, Former President, Boston Community Fund Boston Chamber of Commerce Asst. Secretary Allen
Copies to: S,PA (for PL,PS), OII - LAL
Mr. Henry Cabot, who served as principal spokesman for the group, handed to the Secretary the attached statement on the subject of "Limited World Government," signed by 43 residents of Boston and vicinity. The group emphasized that they had no particular plan to propose and were not affiliated with any of the several organizations such as United World Federalists or Union Now.
Their principal point, expressed particularly by Mr. Coolidge, was that many intellectuals in the United States, including a number of the younger professors in American universities and college students, believed earnestly that in order to bring about lasting peace, the narrow concepts of nationalism and national sovereignty must be broken down and that the western democracies have no adequate and positive program for progressive action in this direction. Consequently, many of them lend a sympathetic ear to the doctrines of the USSR, in the mistaken belief that the Soviet philosophy is a positive approach to internationalism as opposed to nationalism. Mr. Coolidge and others stressed that all they were asking for was a clear statement that the American Government favored, as an ultimate goal, some kind of limited world government with the surrender of sufficient sovereignty by the various nations in order to permit a world police force strong enough to keep the peace. They expressed the belief that if such a policy were clearly announced, many idealists who now regard the western democracies as static in this matter could be won over from their communist orientation.
The Secretary said that he would consider carefully the views expressed and the document left with him. He then pointed out many of the practical difficulties in dealing with the Soviet Union and the numerous barriers to any further limitations on sovereignty in the present world situation. He pointed out that the strong supporters of the United Nations such as former Secretary Cordell Hull, felt that agitation on behalf of world federation, Union Now, or any sort of limited world government was doing great harm to the present United Nations structure by calling constant attention to its weaknesses and limitations. He said that as long as the Soviet Union follows the same policy it does now, the same practical difficulties would face limited world government as now face the United Nations.
The group reiterated their principal point, that the American Government should declare now that limited world government was an ultimate goal of American foreign policy.
George V. Allen
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