Union Now

Although Clarence Kirschmann Streit (January 21, 1896 - July 6, 1986) is not exactly a household name anymore, the journalist and “Atlanticist” worked harder than everyone else in bringing about the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known as NATO, which has been the major alliance of advanced Western nations since the end of World War II. 

As a New York Times correspondent at the League of Nations, Streit was disturbed by independent democracies' apparent inability to deal with such crises as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the rise of Nazism. He came to the conclusion that at the root of the League's problems were nationalism and the democracies' ignorance of their own share of the world's economic and military power, as well as their myopic inability to see past their own interests. Streit began work on his proposal for a union of democracies in 1933. In 1938, with world war appearing increasingly likely, the book was accepted for publication by Harper & Brothers.

Union Now is Streit's proposal for a federal union of the world's major democracies. The first edition of the book was published in 1939. The book is notable for its contribution to the formation of the Atlantic Movement, spearheaded by such groups as Federal Union, Inc. (which would later become the Association to Unite the Democracies) and the Atlantic Union Committee. 

Streit proposed a Union that would bring together the democracies of Europe, North America and the former parts of the British Empire under a single government with the power to grant citizenship and wage war; its membership would expand as more nations joined the democratic camp. This Union would honor individual rights while combining the economic and military power of the world’s democracies against autocratic regimes. Streit argued that the centralization of certain government services and the removal of tariffs would also increase economic efficiency. As a federalist, however, Streit also supported considerable autonomy and home rule for the formerly sovereign nation-states. 

 This edition of Union Now is specially formatted with a Table of Contents.