High- Water Mark

Tennessee's Estes Kefauver last week introduced in the U.S. Senate a resolution calling on the President to invite the other nations which sponsored the North Atlantic Treaty (Britain, Canada, France and Benelux) to a conference on federal union. The bill is endorsed by 19 other Senators,* some of whom, said Kefauver, voted for the treaty "with great hope" and some "with deep misgivings."

The proposed conference would "explore how far their peoples, and other democracies whom the convention may invite to send delegates, can apply between them, within the framework of the United Nations, the principles of free federal union."

The resolution marks the high-water mark (to date) of the movement founded 15 years ago by that timeless gadfly of world government, Clarence Streit. He and his associates think that treaties and arms programs and economic-assistance plans are all doomed to fail unless free nations limit their sovereignty and enter a union similar to that created by the U.S. Constitution.

There are good reasons for distrusting the facile analogy between 13 homogeneous colonies and seven nations very different in historical background and present social philosophy. Yet it was a fact of some importance to the world that the federal-union movement was growing in the U.S. and that Kefauver's resolution had as large and as varied a cross-section of senatorial support as it did.

* Democrats: Chapman, Ky.; Frear, Del.; Fulbright, Ark.; George, Ga.; Gillette, Iowa; Graham, N.C.; Hill, Ala.; Kilgore, W. Va.; Maybank, S.C.; Miller, Idaho; Sparkman, Ala.; Aithers, Ky. Republicans: Baldwin, Conn.; Cain, Wash.; Ecton, Mont.; Hendrickson, N.J.; McCarthy, Wis.; Thye, Minn.; Young, N. Dak.

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