along
the path of federated autonomous units rather than of highly centralized
bureaucracies.

The labor movement has had the same experience in many of the more
advanced countries of the world. There has been almost a century of
local, independent groups, each one acting on its own initiative. The
failure of such a divide-and-perish course was predicted from the
beginning. Then there have been highly centralized organizations of
considerable extent and power, like the American Knights of Labor,
which flourished for a time and then dried up and blew away. But out of
the hundred years experience, the labor movement, as at present
organized in Germany, Britain, Belgium, the United States, etc., is an
exponent of the social principle that local autonomy must be preserved
in all local matters, while questions of general concern must be
referred to some general body which represents the general interest.

One of the most insuperable difficulties before the world at the present
time is the lack of any central authority to which may be referred those
matters of general and vital concern that affect the peoples of more
than one nation. The peoples feel this lack. They are aware of the fact
that industry, science, commerce, art, literature have all leaped the
national boundary fence. This is particularly true of Western Europe,
whose economic life is closely interwoven, and dependent on certain
centers of coal and iron production, and whose political boundaries were
determined before the present economic system was dreamed of. The
importing of food and of raw materials, the development of markets and
of investment opportunities, the organization of means for the transport
and the exchange of commodities are matters of common concern to all of
the important countries of Western Europe. Before the outbreak of the
world war, Europe was an economic net-work of transport, finance and
trade, and as a matter of course, communication and travel were common
between all of the industrial countries. But while there were so many
matters of common concern to Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria,
Belgium, there was no central authority to which these questions could
be referred for decision when the threads of mutual interest became
tangled. Instead, secret and competitive statecraft made the tangle
worse. The mass of conflicting jurisdictions and of petty jealousies
that have grown up among the two score of independent and sovereign