.

In which NATHAN ROBINSON, New York attorney, graduate of Yale Law School, and active Georgist poses a question, supplies the answer, envisions the future -- and calls for faith, courage and understanding for the monumental task that lies ahead.

IN THE cataclysmic conflict now raging and engulfing the earth, our first task is crystal clear -- to win this war! A complete smashing victory by the United Nations is our primary objective. Once and for all time the savage, withering blight of Nazism and all it stands for must be crushed to earth, never to rise again.

With God's help, we must and we shall win this war. Victory is vitally essential for the very preservation of the edifice we call civilization. Defeat would mean slavery and death, a world in darkness and despair.

But -- lest we forget -- the peace, too, must be won; and that is an infinitely more difficult task. Just as victory in war demands its staggering price -- in blood and sacrifice, in sorrow and travail -- so, too, the victory of peace demands its price. The world has never known real peace. The history of the world has been, at best, one of continuous warfare, interrupted by brief periods of truce. The reason for this is clear. Men have, until now, strangely found it easier to pay the heavy penalties of war than to meet the mild conditions imposed by the Lord before He grants us His supreme gift of peace. Men have, until now, strangely found it easier to remain on a level little higher than that of the beasts of the forest than to strive for the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. To wage war requires little, if any, spiritual, moral or intellectual power. Brute strength is the primary factor in combat. Our modern armaments are nothing but the scientific strengthening, extension and multiplication of our strong right arm. Superiority in strength, whether of claw or fist, rifle or bomber, almost invariably determines the final outcome of battle. Every dumb beast knows that!

But what the beast does not know, and what man has apparently not yet fully learned, is how to fight for peace. The weapons of peace are not the weapons of war; they are as different as day from night. The weapons of peace have been known at least two thousand years -- known, but not used; known, but not wielded.

Make no mistake about it, however; one lesson mankind mist learn if it is ever to win everlasting peace: that unless we forge the weapons and learn the principles of peace, unless they become part of us, unless they are woven into the warp and woof of our daily lives, peace, decency and civilization itself will remain but a mirage.

What, then, are these fundamental principles? In addition to the decalogue, simply the golden rule: "Love thy neighbor as thyself;" "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Basic? Elementary? Simple? So simple, alas, that, except for those few noble souls in history known as idealists -- like Jesus, Lincoln and Florence Nightingale -- mankind has ignored them. But these ideals are the very things we must now be fighting for. We must preserve them at all costs; not merely with words; not with hypocritical lip-service; but with all our heart and soul. For if we merely win the war but sacrifice these principles, the war had as well be lost; for we will have won a pyrrhic victory, but lost the peace.

We can, then, and we must secure the future peace of the world by taking the following steps, which are but the necessary and practical applications of those principles or ideals:

We must preserve and enlarge the scope of the idea now so ingeniously embodied in the term "United Nations." Too much credit cannot be given President Franklin D. Roosevelt for coining and enriching the meaning of that phrase. Too much stress cannot be placed on the obvious fact that the world today is smaller, much smaller, than it was one thousand, one hundred, or even ten short years ago. And it is rapidly becoming smaller still. Due to the incredibly profound changes that have taken place in recent history -- changes of all kinds, scientific, economic, political, cultural and spiritual -- the entire world today is smaller, relatively speaking, than was the United States of America at the time of its birth, a little more than one hundred and fifty years ago. The significance of this fact is overwhelming. We cannot go back. No nation, no matter how powerful, just as no individual, can any longer live alone. Each nation, just as each individual, depends upon the others. Nations, like individuals, cannot live with one another without trust and co-operation. And nations, like individuals, cannot live together in anarchy. In order to live together amicably and decently, nations, like individuals, and like our own original thirteen sovereign states when they became a nation, must yield certain rights and prerogatives for the common good. One of these rights, in the case of the individual, is the right to settle his own grievances in his own way. This right civilized man has yielded for the greater right of equal justice for all men; he can no longer "take the law into his own hands." So, in the case of our original thirteen states, for the greater security and welfare of all, each state sacrificed, among other rights, its most sovereign power to maintain its own army and to declare war. So now, after we have won this war, each of the United Nations, and such other nations as may join, must do likewise. Gone, let us hope, forever, is the day when any nation or group of nations shall be in a position to threaten the peace of any other nation. All military power must be vested in a sovereign federation or union of all nations, like our own United States of America, lest any one of them be able to menace the security of any other.

Likewise, all trade barriers and restrictions must be removed. Goods must flow freely between nation and nation. The natural wealth and resources of each must be equally available to all. Not until the earth and all the riches, beauty and abundance thereof are available to all men everywhere, to enjoy in peace, in freedom and in equality; not until the blessings thereof are, not the accidental fortune of a favored few, but the universal heritage of all mankind, will we have peace on earth, good will to men!