Although he remains widely unknown to the general public, Clarence K. Streit is considered by many as the father of modern federalism.

During the first part of the twentieth century, Clarence Streit was uniquely positioned as an observer and commentator on international relations. From a World War I foot soldier he was appointed an aide to the U.S. mission to the Versailles Peace Conference following the war. Later he became an international correspondent for The New York Times , covering international affairs in Europe , including the activities of the League of Nations . By 1939, discouraged by the inadequacies of the international system to avoid the Depression and the coming World War II, he published Union Now , the first of a series of books calling for the leading democratic nations to unite. A proposal for a federal union of the democracies, Union Now advocated the gradual growth of a democratic world federation as a means of forestalling the possibility of future wars. In 1940, a year later, Streit founded the Association to Unite the Democracies , then called Federal Union, Inc., a non-profit organization committed to the burgeoning federalist movement influenced by his timely book. Streit offered the federal union as a method of defending the free world against totalitarian regimes with an expectation that they could eventually become integrated members of the union once they were replaced with democratic movements rooted in freedom. The proposal received wide acclaim and many great leaders of the time endorsed the idea: George Marshall, Harry Truman, Charles De Gaulle, and Robert Schumann were among Streit's supporters.

In 1949, AUD spawned the Atlantic Union Committee, with former Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts as Chairman, former Under-Secretary of State Will Clayton and former Secretary of War Robert Patterson as Vice Chairman, in an intensive nationwide campaign for Atlantic integration. This was the climate in which NATO was proposed, the stage already being set by the Marshall Plan of which Clayton was the principal author.

In 1961, Clarence Streit and his supporters, acting through Federal Union, Inc., at that time 10,000 members strong, got the U.S. Congress to adopt the Atlantic Union Resolution calling for an Atlantic Convention of delegates from leading democratic nations, which supporters hoped might draft a constitution for adoption by the participating nations. The convention met, but only adopted a vague statement calling for increased co-operation and referring the matter to foreign ministries of the participating nations for implementation, which did not lead to any concrete results.

Although the movement waned in the United States , it continued to grow across the Atlantic . Streit's call for a union of democracies which would include a common citizenship, a defense force, a tariff-free market, and a common currency is being answered today in Europe with increased integration of European countries.

For more information about the Atlantic Union movement and to read Clarence Streit's publications, please enter the Atlantic Union Library.