How to Prevent European War [with] a typescript letter signed Sir Max Waechter

Waechter, Sir Max. How to Prevent European War. The European Unity League: An Instrument for Carrying out the Greatest and Most Important Social Reform. [with] a six-page typescript letter from Waechter outlining his thoughts for a European Union, signed to author Douglas Sladen.
 
Pamphlet: London: The European Unity League, 39 St James’s Street, Piccadilly, SW, printed by the Twentieth Century Press (Trade Union and 48 Hours), Clerkenwell Green, [c.1913]. 8vo, 12 pp, original printed wrappers, slight toning and short marginal tears, old stain / remnants of glue to rear cover but very good.

Letter: Surrey: private correspondence (1918), a six-page typed letter signed from Waechter to the author Douglas Sladen, on The Terrace House, Richmond, Surrey headed paper, dated 19 December 1918, rust marks from an old paper clip and edge toning, plus some dog-eared corners, but generally very good and well preserved. Signed by Sir Max on the final page.
 
With an additional four-page leaflet by H. G. Wells, A Reasonable Man’s Peace, reprinted from The Daily News and Leader, 14 August 1917.
 
A rare grouping being an early pamphlet describing a federated Europe along with a reflective letter written at the close of the First World War. Sir Max Waechter (1837–1924), a German-born British philanthropist and advocate of international peace, founded the European Unity League shortly before 1914 to promote the idea of a “Federation of Europe” as the only means of preventing a continental war.
 
The pamphlet, printed by the socialist Twentieth Century Press, sets out Waechter’s vision of a European alliance to curb armaments, introduce a single customs system, and re-channel military expenditure into social welfare. It anticipates both the League of Nations and the later European Union in its call for a European Parliament, common tariff, and cooperative institutions binding the continent’s nations together.
 
The accompanying six-page typed letter to the writer and traveller Douglas Sladen was composed in the aftermath of the Armistice. Waechter thanks Sladen for his suggestions but declares himself a “conscientious objector” to the proposed League of Nations, arguing instead for a European federation on the American model. His critique is acute and far-reaching: he insists that lasting peace requires the abolition of competing national armies, the establishment of a collective European foreign office, a shared tariff for the whole continent, and even the creation of a single European language to be taught in every school. The letter reflects Waechter’s continued efforts to influence public opinion at the moment the Versailles negotiations were taking shape.
 
Few examples of his publications survive, and contemporary correspondence of this substance is rare. An exceptional grouping in the early history of the European idea, predating Churchill’s call for a “United States of Europe” by more than two decades.