“Suppose that, like the States of the USA all states had lost the right to maintain armed forces, the right to do what they like in matters affecting other countries, the right to impose tariffs or interfere with free travel. What a hideous slavery would result! We should no longer be liable to be conscripted in order to kill and be killed in conflicts arising out of imperial rivalries. The whole world would be our shop and the whole world our market. We should wander as freely over the world as now Americans wander over America. If we wished to tax ourselves in order to improve our roads, our schools, or our houses, we should be free to do so, much more free indeed than if we had already spent more than we could afford, and borrowed the rest, in order to “defend” ourselves. As regards social life generally, why should we be less free than we are now? Individually we should be richer, happier, healthier and freer. Collectively we should have lost only the martial elements in national pride. What should we have lost that is worth preserving?”
W B Curry, from “The Case for Federal Union”, published by Penguin in the UK in 1939, and which proceeded to sell 100,000 copies.