Garry Davis, a young stage-actor and former pilot demobilized from the US Air Force, on his return to civilian life joined the United World Federalists (UWF), the main world federalist organization in the United States, created at Asheville (N.C.) in February 1947 by the association of various pre-existing movements. The debates, theoretical and strategic, opposed in particular the advocates of a People’s World Constitutional Convention and those who more realistically preferred proposing amendments to the United Nations Charter, adopted in San Francisco in 1945.

The international federalist movement was not exempt from polemics at the end of the Second World War, and this without taking into account the basic disagreements with the “Atlantic Federalists” of the U.S. Federal Union Inc., who followed Clarence Streit and wanted to found an Atlantic Federation to unite the democracies of Western style¹. The strategic debates occupied a large part of the postwar federalist meetings at Montreux, where in August 1947 the founding Congress of the World Movement for World Federal Government (WMWFG) and the first statutory Congress of the Union of European Federalists (UEF), formed the previous year in Paris, took place, and also the preparatory meeting of Luxembourg in 1946, convened by the British Federal Union, and the second Congress of the WMWFG in Luxembourg in February 1948.

The first stumbling-block was the strategic alternative between the constituent method, which was denying that the U.N. was a step toward a World Government, and the gradualist and reformist approach which aimed to UN reform. In Europe, this dividing line led to the splitting of the UEF, after the failure of the European Defense Community in August 1954, and to the later founding of the Congress of the European People by Altiero Spinelli. The second major debate was about whether an eventual World Government should be given limited powers in order to maintain peace and prevent a nuclear holocaust (“minimalism”), or be also committed to establish international peace and justice, and be therefore endowed with wider powers (“maximalism”). At the Luxembourg Congress of the WMWFG in February 1948, a Special Committee to coordinate the action of the People’s World Constitutional Convention was created, and a “Parliamentary Approach” was proposed, relying on World Federalists parliamentary groups, already existing in some countries, to draw up a World Constitution. In those days the World Federalist Youth and the World Citizens following Davis were more “maximalist” than the partisans of the WMWFG. In the U.S., at the end of the fifties of the last century, two good examples of this debate can be found in the work of Grenville Clark and Louis B. Sohn, World Peace through World Law² and The Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution³, written by the Chicago Committee headed by the antifascist Italian writer Giuseppe Borgese and his wife Elizabeth, Thomas Mann’s daughter. A third line of fracture of international Federalism separated the strict partisans of World Federalism from those who thought it indispensable, mainly in Europe but also in Africa and South America, to proceed in stages with the foundation of great regional Federations leading towards the World Federation⁴.

According to the words of Guy Marchand, one of his first followers, Davis was a “man of great gestures but not an organizer, thinker and theoretician”⁵. He will provide the Parisian crowds with a vocal, popular topic and arouse their enthusiasm by popularizing the idea of World Federation and Universal Citizenship. During all that period, he will keep in touch with the WMWFG, but he will never accept that his followers be absorbed by this organization.

It was in mid-September 1948 that the action of Davis really began. His certificate of registration in France was to expire before September 12^th. He settled on the stairs of Palais de Chaillot, where the UN was to meet since it had not yet a seat in New York. He proclaimed himself “Citizen of the World, Number one”. He had renounced his American citizenship on May 25^th and demanded a reform of the Charter of the UN according to the procedure defined in Article 109. A few, rare followers joined him, among whom some members of the movement Stop War, and a former Resistant, Robert Sarrazac, who in 1948 had founded in Paris the Human Front of World Citizens and who began contacts and conversations to form a Committee of Solidarity which came into being on October 22^nd6. Three days before, Davis and some of his supporters had got into the room where the General Assembly of the UN was to meet. Finally it was Sarrazac who read the Declaration prepared in the name of Davis who seemed to have lost his voice. “Mr. Chairman and Delegates: I interrupt you in the name of the people of the world not represented here. Though my words may be unheeded, our common need for world law and order can no longer be disregarded. We, the people, want the peace which only a world government can give. The sovereign states you represent divide us and lead us to the abyss of Total War. I call upon you no longer to deceive us by this illusion of political authority. I call upon you to convene forthwith a World Constituent Assembly to raise the standard around which all men can gather, the standard of true peace, of One Government for One World. And if you fail us in this… stand aside, for a People’s World Assembly will arise from our ranks to create such a government. We can be served by nothing less”⁷.

A number of intruders were briefly arrested before Albert Camus held a Press Conference. Encouraging reactions came from all sides: some twenty British Members of Parliament, several American Atomic Scientists, among whom Albert Einstein: “The worst kind of slavery which burdens the people of our time is the militarization of the people, but this militarization results from the fear of new mass-destruction in threatening world war. The well-intended effort to master this situation by the creation of the United Nations has shown itself regrettably insufficient. A supra-national institution must have enough powers and independence if it shall be able to solve the problems of international security. Neither can one nor one has the right to leave the taking of such a decisive step entirely to the initiative of the governments. Only the unbendable will of the people can free the forces which are necessary for such a radical break with the old and outlived traditions in politics. I greet this assembly as a serious effort to serve a most important mission of our generation”⁸.

A first public meeting for “explanations” took place on December 6^th at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, packed with more than 5,000 sympathizers. Davis asked for the participants’ help and cooperation in his “fight for freedom and the existence of all of the human race”. He rejected the accusation of naivety and refused to be influenced by the fact that the UN was blocked in its action by the rivalry and antagonism between the USA and the USSR, because “our own problems, we peoples of the World are not situated on this plan. What we are afraid of is War itself. There will be no victor in the next war. There will be only destruction and death. Are we going to satisfy ourselves with waiting and hoping as we did formerly, until it is too late? Shall we accept to be entirely destroyed in our apathy and indifference? I say no. I ask you to join your voices to mine. We must demand total security. People of Paris, it is up to you to speak out!⁹». The meeting ended with a number of questions being asked to the United Nations (Do they have a plan to organize peace? If not, are they ready to recognize they don’t have one? And can they ignore the Declaration of Davis demanding a World Government?...) and a formal request: “that the debates of the General Assembly be published and broadcast by the World radios¹⁰” … A few days later, on the eve of the conclusion of the session of the UN, Davis and his followers expressed themselves once more at the Vel d’Hiv, which was also packed with spectators.

According to Marchand, in those days “only three men were capable to fill the Vel d’Hiv: de Gaulle, Thorez (the leader of the French Communist Party) and Garry Davis”¹¹. The President of the UN General Assembly, Mr. Herbert Evatt, answered the questions asked at the Salle Pleyel: “The UN has not received the general power or prerogative to make the peace…” and the diplomat concluded “as far as I am concerned… I would readily take part in the supreme goal of a World Federation and World Citizenship”¹². To this Davis answered: “I explained that I have given back my American passport because I had reached the conclusion that no passport could protect anybody against war… With three of my friends… we have addressed our collective petition to the Bureau of the President of the (UN) Assembly . Then, by myself, I went to see Dr. Evatt to insist on the gravity of our questions and the urgency to get an answer from the United Nations… Yesterday… at 7 o’clock, then at 9, I asked ‘where is the answer?’… We get no answer… At the last minute we got the answer… Perhaps form a diplomatic point of view it was clever to give an answer so late. A matter of protocol, no doubt. But this shows ... the difference of attitude that exists between the UN and the People… They are interested only in diplomacy and protocol. Dr. Evatt writes to us that the UN does not have the power to make peace, and it is not the part they have to play… Our proposals to create an organism that can really make and maintain a real peace does not interest or concern the UN We cannot accept any longer to be led by Statesmen who use us as pawns in the game of national interests. We want to be led by men who represent us directly, we, the people of the human community, we want a World Government… It is often said that, indeed, a World Government would probably be the best, but that ... to-day it would be an utopia. On the contrary we believe that the utopia would be to imagine that this so practical world, threatened by starvation, famine and nuclear bombs could last much longer… We have no illusions about the difficulties that are waiting for us but we must choose between these difficulties and the massacres and slaughters of war. My choice is made. And you, people of Paris, it is your turn to act!”¹³.

The meeting closed with the adoption of a Resolution which concluded that: “The 17,000 Parisians that met on December 9th at the Vel d’Hiv…; 2) acknowledge the answer of President Evatt: The U.N. and its President have received no power nor prerogative to make the peace; 3) they ask the masses of the world to become aware of this declaration: 4) they call for a direct consultation of the masses of the world as the only means to give expression and power to their sovereign will for an Assembly of the Peoples to organize the peace”¹⁴. The U.N. left Paris without any orders or slogans being established for a pursuit of action; according to Marchand, it was time to get interested in Davis, whose French visa was due to expire on December 21^st. On the 24^th he was received by the French President of the Republic, Vincent Auriol¹⁵, since Davis refused an extension of his visa, that he considered as “a measure of favor”. According to Marchand, such an audience was the “one solution remained for the Solidarity Committee”: to see the President and obtain his clemency, so that the first Citizen of the World be not apprehended by the police without personal documents”¹⁶.

On December 24^th, Davis delivered to Vincent Auriol a personal message explaining that: ”the freedom of expression I ask for, the World Citizenship wished for by so many men in the world should not depend on an exceptional administrative measure for one individual; but the simple kindness and favor of the French President of the Republic, without reducing the risks I take upon myself, will be sufficient to preserve in this country and in the world the chances of its advent”¹⁷. The Council of Solidarity in turn affirmed that: “the country where the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was first born, ought to be the one where the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of the Citizens of the World will be worked out and drafted”, and concluded: “we have the honor to appeal to the President of the Republic to render this possible by renewing the tradition of hospitality and asylum in favor of Garry Davis”¹⁸.

Auriol “expressed feelings of cordiality and sympathy for the enterprise of Davis, so that he will pursue his action without being afraid to be arrested or harassed”¹⁹. In mid-December 1948 the first of two numbers of the journal “La Patrie mondiale” (“The World Homeland”) appeared with articles by Davis, Camus and Breton, and at the end of December a sheet under the title “Peuple du Monde” (“People of the World”) was inserted in the daily newspaper Combat announcing the creation, independent of all political organizations, of an “International Register of the Citizens of the World”²⁰. At end of 1948, Davis addressed an appeal to “all the peoples of the earth ... to all those who do not want war… to express their desire to be registered as citizens of the world”²¹.

Davis remained in Europe until the Spring of 1950, before returning to New York. In April 1950, a Pact of the Citizens of the World was made public, and Robert Sarrazac tried to surf on the initial wave by publishing a Charter of “Mondialisation” (Globalization) of Communities, territorial or not, adopted at Cahors (French South West) when the town was “mundialized” with 5,000 participants in the same Spring 1950. A “collective copy” of this World Citizenship will have some success mostly in France, but also in West Germany, Belgium, Denmark, and beyond Europe in India, Japan, then in Canada and the United States, where it took the form of “World Government Weeks”.

Vigorous criticisms against Davis burst and spread in Paris, even from pacifists, as in the monthly Esprit accusing him of trying “to make peace by magic”, or from European federalists, such as the review Fédération where Jean- Maurice Martin wrote that “in France Garry Davis was given the welcome usually reserved to those who make fun of policemen, bait the teacher or go on hunger strike in the name of the brotherhood of men. The French have always had a soft spot for eccentrics, fakes and prophets, jokers and victims, small-time inventors and makers of grand systems, who show the same calm courage whether in professing their faith or in pulling a hoax”²². In the same period, the WMWFGand the World federalists held their Third International Congress at Stockholm during the Summer of 1949. In Common Cause, the review of the Chicago Committee, Elizabeth Mann Borgese recognized that “Garry Davis’ action, reaching for the first time in the history of the Movement the imagination of the masses, and the impetus of the People’s Convention idea, have both grown too tall for the suit tailored at Luxembourg”²³.

Translated by Joseph Montchamp

¹ Clarence Streit, Union now: A Proposal for a Federal Union of the leading democracies of the North Atlantic, éd. Harper & Bros., New York, 1939, p. 315

² Grenville Clark, Louis Sohn, World Peace through World Law, éd. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1958, p. 540

³ Committee to Frame a World Constitution, “Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution”, in Common Cause, Chicago, n° 1, 1948, pp. 1-40; later, in E. Mann Borgese,

A Constitution for the World, ed. Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara (Ca.), 1965, p. 112

⁴ For exemple the Asociación Pacifista Argentina, founded 1945 in Buenos Aires after the collapse of the Unión Federal of the early 1940’s, which participated in the

Federalist meetings in Luxembourg and Montreux but acted also as a strong support to Davis, or later the Movimiento pro Federación Americana (MPFA), from the

end of the 40’s to the mid 1970’s led from Bogota then Buenos Aires, becoming the Latin American branch of the WMWFG

⁵ Cf. Guy Marchand, L’épopée Garry Davis, written in 1951 and published in 1988, p. 184; quote p. 69

⁶ Cf. Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 19, for the initial list of members. Among them, Georges Altman, Claude Aveline, Claude Bourdet, André Breton, Albert Camus,

Emmanuel Mounier, l’abbé Pierre, Jean Paulhan, Raymond Queneau, the protestant pasteur Roser, Sarrazac, Vercors…; many of them having supported federalist

positions during the Resitance (Altman, Bourdet, Camus…) or were in 1948 still involved in the Federalist movement

⁷Cf. Garry Davis, My Country is the World. The adventures of a World Citizen, éd. G. P. Putman’s son, New York, 1961, p. 223, citation, p. 216. The slightly different

French text pronounced by Sarrazac can be found in Guy Marchand, Ibidem, pp. 23-2

⁸ Cf. Garry Davis, Ibidem, citation, pp. 218-219. For French version, slightly different, cf. Guy Marchand, Ibidem, pp. 28-29

⁹ Cf. Guy Marchand, Ibidem, pp. 32-33. Cf. also, written a few days before, “Letter to Dr. Evatt (November 23 Rd. 1948)”, in Garry Davis, Ibidem, pp. 216-217

¹⁰ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 34

¹¹ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 36

¹² Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 36

¹³ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, pp. 37-39

¹⁴ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 40

¹⁵ Auriol was a genuine sympathizer of European and World Federalists and an old comrade of Léon Blum (the major Socialist leader) before the War and a contributor

to the clandestine Resistance movement journal “Libérer et Fédérer” (“Liberate end Federate”) near Toulouse in the French South-West

¹⁶ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 43

¹⁷ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 44

¹⁸ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 44

¹⁹ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 44

²⁰ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 45

²¹ Guy Marchand, Ibidem, p. 46

²² Cf. “Citoyen du monde… ou la contradiction dans les termes”, in Fédération, Paris, March 1949, n° 50. Quoted in Jean-Francis Billion, World Federalism, International

Federalism and International Democracy. A new History of Supranational Federalist Movement, preface by Lucio Levi, published by World Federalist Movement – Institute

for Global Policy, New York, and Altiero Spinelli Institute for Federalist Studies, Ventotene, 2001, p. 213, quotation p. 35

²³ Cf. Jean-Francis Billion, Ibidem, quotation p. 36