Culbertson's System

Suave, brainy Ely Culbertson, who has never thought of himself as merely a bridge expert, tossed aside his famed, profitable Culbertson System four years ago to devote himself to a greater ambition: planning a postwar world system which would be as orderly, logical and responsive as a deck of cards properly manipulated. Last fortnight, in his 64-page, paperbound, 25-c- Summary of the World Federation Plan, he presented the outline.

Critics, suspicious at first, or irritated by this presumptive bidding by a novice, found the new Culbertson system worth serious regard. He had tackled the postwar world like a bridge problem involving a deck with 2,000,000,000 cards, hundreds of suits. His solution was as logical and precise as his card-playing.

Culbertson, as an amateur geopolitico, proposed uniting the nations of the world into eleven regional federations: the U.S. and Latin America, the United Kingdom and British Dominions, Latin Europe, Middle Europe, Northern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, China, India, Japan, Malaysia. Each federation would have its own constitution, its own government. Neither nations nor federations would have armies--only police forces armed with nothing heavier than machine guns.

Over all federations would be a world government, with executive, legislative and judicial branches, elected by the governments of the federations. Chief duty of the world government: to maintain peace. Its weapon: an army of possibly 2,000,000 men, drawn from all the nations of the world according to a careful mathematical formula.

Presentation of the plan's skeleton in pamphlet form marked Step No. 3 in Ely Culbertson's systematic campaign. First he submitted the plan to several scores of notables in all walks of life, got almost unanimous approval, at least of principle. Second, he published a succinct outline in last February's Reader's Digest. Step No. 4 will be the appearance in June of a weighty volume called Total Peace, which will present the plan in fullest detail.

In his time, Rumanian-born Ely Culbertson has been a young Russian revolutionary, an intellectual hobo, a student at Geneva, and an author (The Strange Lives of One Man, 1940). Last week he dictated furiously on his new book, intent on his own version of what the future should be. Some 22% of the army would be used as the first weapon of defense for any country attacked.

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