Offer Federal Union to the German people and paralyse Hitler’s armies

A Statement of Peace Policy  (read in the original format here peacepolicy)

1. THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD HAVE NO QUARREL WITH ONE ANOTHER. They are fighting because the Versailles Treaty left each nation free to decide for itself where its interests lay and to judge for itself how far it would co-operate with others.

2. THERE MUST NOT BE ANOTHER VERSAILLES. In the last war the men who fought and died to end war, fought and died in vain: The men and women who fight and die in the present war will also fight and die in vain if we continue to allow each separate nation state to pursue its own policy, unmindful of the peoples whom its policy affects.

3. MANKIND HAS A COMMON DESTINY AND THERE ARE SOME MATTERS OF COMMON CONCERN TO US ALL. These matters must be transferred to a common government to represent all peoples who wish to work together on the basis of their common humanity, so that they may make laws for their mutual benefit.

4. Therefore we urge our rulers to make it known that their PEACE AIM IS TO CREATE THIS COMMON GOVERNMENT BY A UNION OF FREE PEOPLES, and that on this basis, they will make peace at any time. If they do this the German peoples will have a standing invitation to join in the work of rebuilding Western civilisation as soon as they put an end to Hitlerism and hostilities.

5. THE COMMON GOVERNMENT must be freely chosen by the peoples of the union and be responsible to them, so that under it they may have equal rights regardless of nationality.

In order that it may remove the cause of war it must control matters common to all, such as tariffs, currency and colonial administration.

In order that it may abolish the instruments of war, it must control the united forces of all the states whose peoples enter the union.

It must have power, like national governments to make laws which bind individuals directly and it must have a civil service to administer these laws.

It must be based on a Constitution, which guarantees the civil and social liberties of the individual and which ensures that each nation will manage for itself its own domestic affairs.

6. The Constitution thus becomes the Great Charter of a FEDERAL UNION OF FREE PEOPLES: a union at first of those peoples who desire it at once, but open to all on equal terms under the rules and conditions of membership. It will be the kernel of world union in the future.

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