Munoz Claims Nuclear Age Makes Federalism Crucial

Governor Luis Munoz Marin reiterated his belief that nationalism is an obsolescent concept in the face of nuclear energy in the concluding Godkin lecture, last night. He declared that federalism therefore must cease to be only a "noble but utopian idea" and become a "purpose to be held by the hearts of mankind."

Men can no longer afford to dismiss federalism as an idea for "a little group of serious thinkers," Munoz stated, implying that the alternative is destructive nationalism and possible nuclear extinction. "Wars in the past," the Governor of Puerto Rico said, "have been fought by national states or blocs with a prospect of victory; there is no such prospect in the future," because of the absolute power of modern weapons.

Fortunately, the growth of science and technology--"this massive and decisive fact"--serves to bring nations together, while additional motivation, he said, lies in the great necessity for cooperation in space exploration.

Agreement Now Possible

Agreement, or at least agreement to avoid destruction, is now possible between East and West, according to Munoz. He pointed out that "economic rivalry in a world of great productivity cannot be the same as economic rivalry in a world of scarcity," and there is now no reason why both blocs can not exist together. Already the conflict on the idealogical front has shifted, he noted, so that the West no longer stresses the necessity of private initiative and profit but now asserts that "whatever is achieved economically is at the expense of freedom."

Neither side, Munoz held, will be so foolish as to risk imposing its ideological or technological methods on the other in face of the grave dangers involved. "The deepest religious differences have accommodated themselves to coexistence," in the past, he said.

Instead, competition should be devoted to the problem of eliminating poverty and lessening the gap between the advanced and the underdeveloped countries of the world. "Our goal is not a homogeneous world dominated by any given system," Munoz declared.

Closing his lecture, Munoz pressed for a "revolution of deepening expectations" where reliance on the freedom of man's intelligence would dispel the "grave stultifying nationalism and power-politics."