The Universal League of Freemasons ( ULF )
tragic circumstances . Nothing is known of the content of the debates , or how many brothers were present . We only know that those present elected Brother Junod to the presidency to replace Brother Uhlmann , who had died a few months earlier . That is all we know ...
A few days later , the Second World War began : On September 1 , the Wehrmacht invaded Poland , and on September 3 , the United Kingdom and then France declared war on the Reich . In the middle of 1940 , the unstoppable advance of the German army was a decisive turning point . The Reich seemed invulnerable , several countries were occupied and , naturally , it was the end of Freemasonry , and therefore of the ULF , in Denmark , the Netherlands , Belgium , France ... and in so many other countries . A core maintained its activity in Switzerland , a neutral country , around “ Kurt von Sury , former Grand Master of Alpina , who liquidated the day-today affairs and with the free elements of the ULF began to provide assistance to the children of occupied countries .” 20 The ULF was reformed in 1947 , in a congress held in Basel . It was a different ULF that took up the torch of harmony between brothers , and it once again faced international masonic divisions against a background of “ regularity ” ...
Could the union of international Masonry before 1939 have prevented the Second World War ? Given the resentment born from the conclusion of the First World War , the aggravated nationalisms that were then established , the extremist regimes that rose to power in different countries in Europe , the economic crisis that came about at the end of the 1920s , the influence of Freemasonry , even speaking with a single voice , would have barely counted , and its pacifist voice would have barely been heard .
For the ULF , there remains a beautiful history , at least for its first decades ... a history written under the sign of a desire for understanding between brothers with the idea that this understanding between masons of different obediences would later make the divisions between the Obediences obsolete . We do not know , however , what idea of Freemasonry it would have favored .
20 Marc Grosjean , Le Droit humain international . 1915-1947 , de l ’ éveil à la mise en œuvre ( Paris : DE- TRAD , 2002 ).
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