Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 138: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION angry debate. It will not be less so when it has to be applied to other worlds. The successful steering of the legal situation to the point of maximum benefit, through the tangled web of intrigue, prejudice, power politics and sheer ig- norance, will call for states- manship of no mean order. Some people believe that Earth’s present problems directly stem from the innate incapacity of the world’s statesmen. If this is so, if the human mind is somehow . unable to rise to the admini- strative heights required by even the relatively simple situation on Earth, how is it going to contend with all the complexities of interplanetary expansion ? The answer to this is quite simple: It cannot so contend, This answer is unpleasant and we tend to reject it, for it gives the future no hope beyond the hope of keeping 137 down conflict to the minimum rather than wiping it out altogether. In rejecting it, we must assume that our states- men are capable of running the world, if only they are given the right conditions. It then becomes a question of providing statesmen of the future with the right condi- tions under which they can administer the planets. The only way of doing this that we know of at present is by uniting—by not seeking national independence and by not trying to retain it in the sense that all other nations are deemed potential enemies and, therefore, to be encouraged as little as possible. Not only the law of the future, but all other roads, lead back to this same conclusion. Pride, prejudice and patriotism are misplaced in a world of intelligent people. Only when they have gone will the Earth be such. comicloooks.com