Word: kalergi
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...autobiography of a man and a movement," Count Coudenhove-Kalergi tells about the effect of Woodrow Wilson's oratory on liberal inhabitants of the old Austro-Hungarian empire. The Count was all for Wilson, but Versailles soon disillusioned him. Where Coudenhove-Kalergi had hoped for a united Europe in 1919, he soon discovered that every little language was getting a country...
During the interlude between the two world wars, Count Coudenhove-Kalergi spent his time traveling about Europe organizing Pan-European units. For a time things looked propitious. But the depression and the sudden rise of Hitlerian National Socialism in Germany wrote finis to the Count's hopes. Throughout the '30s the Pan-European Union fought a rearguard action, trying to rally good nationalists to a program that would result in an effective encirclement of Hitler...
Federation or Force. Eventually Count Coudenhove-Kalergi would like to see a federated world. Lacking that, he hopes the U.S. will preserve the peace by keeping a preponderant air force in being to supplement the work of the British Navy. As for Europe, he does not despair of federalizing it after the war is over. He would have the European federal units accept a common Bill of Rights, and elect members of a European House of Representatives on a population basis. The European Senate would consist of the prime ministers and foreign ministers of the various countries. Together...
None of this, however, will daunt Count Coudenhove-Kalergi. A famous name in Europe, the Count can be relied upon to drum up much sentiment for his ideas in the federalist U.S. He has a quite obvious appeal for internationalists. But he also has a program that can legitimately interest the isolationists. For his federalized Europe could presumably get along without the New World. The isolationists would like that just as much as the Europeans...
...whatever one may think of Coudenhove-Kalergi's ideas, the opening chapters make Crusade for Pan-Europe one of the best autobiographies in years...