Chapter XIV

WORLD MAN CENTER, CYPRUS

“Faith and love and venture are the values I have built my life on. I do not think they are going to fail on Cyprus.”

—Caresse

The world at this very moment stands on the brink of defeat or success, of Heaven or Hell,” Caresse wrote to Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus: “Why not be the one country to take the forward step . . . toward One World?”

She was beguiled by the island birthplace of Venus Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Cyprus appealed to her sense of history. It was Mark Anthony’s love-gift to Cleopatra, the seaport where Desdemona waited for Othello’s return. She discovered that Zenon of Kitium, a follower of Socrates and Plato, first considered Cyprus as a neutral territory dedicated to peace. When she met another Zenon of Kitium—His Excellency Zenon Rossides, a suave international lawyer, then Cypriot Ambassador to the United Nations—from that time forward Cyprus and the Cypriots played an important role in her life.

In recent history, Cypriots were ruled more often by Mars than by Venus. The island was the prey of contending faiths and factions, the British, the Turks and the Greeks. The British established a Crown Colony in 1878 that endured until after World War II, when the Greek Cypriots petitioned for énosis (union with Greece) and the Turks for partition. In the compromise government, the Greek majority won two-thirds representation, but violence and the énosis movement still persist.

Against this historic backdrop, Caresse—at the suggestion of Rossides—proposed to install her World Citizens’ Center, ousted from Delphi, on Cypriot soil. If Makarios agreed, “the Archbishop would be known throughout the world as the leader who resisted greed, militarism, and power politics,” she said. She knew that Makarios was no stranger to American thought and ideals. The 37-year-old Bishop of Kitium had been studying theology in Boston when—in October 1950—he was called home to become Archbishop Makarios III. Some ten years later, after a plebescite, the Cypriots elected him first President of the Republic. In this man of impressive physical presence, ready eloquence, and mischievous sense of humor, the Greek Cypriots found a dynamic leader, and Caresse a man worthy of her unabashed admiration. She asked if she might come to the island to talk with His Beatitude and the women of Cyprus.

She flew to Cyprus with Rossides to seek a site for World Man. From the air, Nicosia appeared to be an irregular row of white houses, green-shuttered with red-tiled roofs, against a backdrop of the majestic Kyrenia mountains. On the ground, it was obvious that some of the native charm was giving way to so-called “progress.” The old-­fashioned coffee shops still lined one side of the square, but a Ford garage now stood between the ancient Kyrenia Gate and the Convent of the Dancing Dervishes. A large municipal market had taken the place of the old trellised bazaars, and a beauty-shop replaced the spice-sellers’ stalls. Outside the walls, where once there were fields of barley, were blocks of suburban apartments, shops and offices, and a movie theater.

Caresse knew that she could not complete her Herculean task on the first visit, but she began by purchasing eight acres of land (with $2,000 from her personal account) near the ancient Abbey of Belle Pais. British writers have compared the site to Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, but it was difficult for her to imagine this exotic southern isle transposed to a northern setting. In the spring of the year, the sea and sky were an unbelievably clear blue, the olive trees and cypresses a deep green. Anemones and cyclamen carpeted the ground, gladioli and wild irises and tulips were just beginning to peek through, and the red oleanders were already in full bloom. Rosemary and thyme were growing like wildflowers on the hillsides, and the air was fragrant with the scent of orange blossoms and bitter lemon. As Caresse approached the Abbey, she could hear the distant, doleful pan-pipes of a goatherd, as Euripides must have heard them. The sun’s reflection tinged the ancient stonework with gold. It was love at first sight. Caresse said “Yes!” to Cyprus.

Back in New York, she began to take practical steps to realize her idealistic dream. Incorporating the World Man Center with offices at 866 United Nations Plaza, she named herself president and called upon Rufus King—whose Manifesto for Individual Secession into a World Community (Black Sun Press published in 1948), a respected international lawyer, to act as secretary-treasurer. The Greek artist Michael Lekakis and architect Buckminster Fuller agreed to serve as vice-presidents. In addition to Rossides, 15 important names were listed on the letterhead as members of the executive committee: Norman Cousins, John Huston, Philip Ives, Elsa Schiaparelli, Cyril Connolly, Kay Boyle, and Jean Hélion, among others. Her granddaughter, Lorraine de Mun, now living in New York, would provide secretarial backup.

Caresse’s long-standing friendship with “Bucky” Fuller dated back to the Depression days of the ’30s, when he came with Isamu Noguchi to Romany Marie’s restaurant in the Village. By the ’60s, Fuller’s star was rising. As architect of the U.S. Pavillion at Expo ’67, the world’s fair in Montreal, Fuller was featured as a cover story in Time and the subject of an in-depth article in The New Yorker. Bucky’s active participation as architect of the World Man Center was regarded as a coup by Caresse. It lent credibility to her idealistic Cyprus project.

Fuller wrote to Caresse on Valentine’s Day 1966 from Carbondale, where he was then research professor at Southern Illinois University:

Very dear Caresse:

This letter confirms my agreement with you to act as your architect for the Cyprus undertaking. It also confirms my agreement to go with you sometime between June 15 and June 30 from Rome to Cyprus to inaugurate our design task. Now that you have substantial funds pledged to the project and Makarios’ assurance of an adequate portion of the whole of the island for a world headquarters, and have substantial friendly support of both Greek and Turkish youth, and probably with United Nations support from U Thant, I see no reason why you should hold back any longer on publicity.

With greatest love, faithfully yours,

Bucky

That summer, Fuller wrote to Rossides proposing the construction of a building suitable for World Man’s oasis on “space-ship earth,” a large, geodesic dome “to act as a vast umbrella to protect the activities below it from rains, winds, and too intense sun.” He added, “I foresee that the Cypriots heretofore agitated by external sovereign nations to fight against one another may wish to cross the line for sovereign nation control into the World Man area, or may even request Archbishop Makarios to extend the World Man land to enclose their own homes on Cyprus. We are trying to . . . become transcendental to the international concept, wherein nations become as obsolete as sovereign boroughs, cities, states, countries. . . .”

Yet political disturbances erupted again on the island. On June 17, Fuller wrote to Caresse:

Mr. Lekakis called me today to say that Mr. Rossides . . . had become truly disturbed to learn that you had written to Makarios regarding talking with Dr. Kutchuk about our undertaking. Mr. Rossides feels, as do I, that it will be easy to upset this situation due to the smoldering conditions of yesterday’s fighting. I urge you to talk with nobody about the situation until we all meet in Cyprus, and some firm arrangements have been made.

Caresse well might heed Fuller’s warning to use discretion when dealing with the political leader of the Turkish Cypriot community, Dr. Fazil Kutchuk. He was a heavy-set, stubborn man with a gruff voice who presented a sharp contrast with Makarios, the shrewd tactician and patient bargainer. Kutchuk’s second language was French, not English; he was inclined to miss the point of much of the conversation and to assume that the jokes were on him.

While Fuller was dictating a letter to Caresse, a reporter from the Washington Post called to confirm a news item picked up from an international wire service: “Is it true that you have been retained by Mrs. Crosby to design an International Peace Center on Cyprus?” That was the first question. She then startled Fuller by quoting without a source the beginning of a sentence of his letter to Ambassador Rossides: “I foresee that the Cypriots, heretofore agitated by external sovereign nations to fight against one another, may wish to cross the line. . . .”

Fuller was alarmed that the reporter quoted the sentence out of context. To the best of his knowledge, he replied, none of the proposed agreements had occurred, and “if the proposed center was realized, it would be supernational. . . . I am not interested in anything international.”

It was a matter of semantics, but Fuller was agitated by the exchange, and warned Caresse:

It is my experience that nothing will bring about the perishment of a good idea more swiftly than premature publicity. My only hope is that we are dealing with something so evolutionarily solid in respect to emerging World Man that we will be able to weather the complex of misunderstandings and emotional disturbances and geopolitics in general . . .

He added a native New Englander’s word of caution: “When caught in a sudden lethal squall, experience has taught me that swift attention to cleaning up the ship and getting it on an even keel quickly enough sometimes prevents a following knock-down from sinking the ship.” He closed with a strong vote of confidence in Caresse:

The ramifications of your life are great. Nothing I have to say should make you feel that I have anything other than the greatest affection, admiration, and enthusiasm for you. . . . I am confident that if we weather this we may be about to establish the first true freehold of World Man. His numbers will multiply rapidly to hundreds of millions. In 2000 A.D. all humans will have become Universal Citizens. The concept of man as a citizen of a geographically limited ward, county, town, state or nation will seem as strange and foreign to the life and thoughts of 2000 A.D.’s “Universe Citizens” as now seem the lives of slaves in a Roman galley or the cave-dwelling events of Stone Age man.

Caresse was “terribly distressed and frankly astonished and angry about the abusive report” of the Washington Post reporter, she wrote Fuller. George Weller from the Chicago Daily News had lent her his house in Kyrenia, and she suspected that that was where the story originated. She had shown the portfolio of documents about World Man and enthused about Fuller’s participation in it over cocktails between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. on June 14. “He must have put the story on the wire that very evening or next morning . . . I was flabbergasted—what can I do to help get the ship on an even keel again? It does look as if it were rocking.”

Caresse mentioned to Fuller that Rossides was disturbed by the letter she had written to President Makarios, urging him to seek the cooperation of all Cypriots, including the Turks, in the World Man project as follows:

I know that you have many enthusiastic friends among the young people in England, in America, and in Greece, and I hope when I come to Cyprus with Dr. Fuller . . . that I will be able to meet the Vice President of Cyprus and talk with him about the possibility of interesting the artists and the youth of Turkey as well as the Turkish Cypriots in this concerted effort.

“I can’t play at secret diplomacy,” she admitted. “I believed that Makarios was the President of the Republic of Cyprus . . . not just a Greek puppet President. . . . I still have faith in his integrity.” She planned to meet Fuller in Nicosia on the Fourth of July, she added, and “I hope you are not too upset, for nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come . . . Our ship must not founder once launched.”

On July 7, she issued an official statement in the name of Makarios from the Presidential Palace in Nicosia. As the first head of a sovereign nation to cede land to World Man, Makarios offered the 200-acre property in the vicinity of the Abbey of Belle Pais, to be administered for 50 years under a trusteeship “of the highest order of intellectual and scientific capability.” (The World Academy of Art and Science, which included in its governing body a number of Nobel Prize winners, was one possibility.) Of the estimated cost of the conference building—about one million dollars—the Archbishop was to contribute $200,000.

Referring to the continuing violence on the island, Fuller used the opportunity of the Palace press conference to point out that armed conflict was always the result of the Malthusian principle that mankind multiplies far faster than the capacity of Earth’s physical resources to support human life. If mankind could succeed in increasing the world’s resources to support human life, then war—even political systems—would become obsolete.

In August, Caresse met representatives of the WAAS, Dr. Max Habicht and Dr. Boyko, in Rome. She wrote to Fuller:

You will guess that I am not completely happy at the turn our planning has taken. . . . I am wondering just what influenced you to name the Academy as caretaker at that first press conference in Nicosia? We know so little about their activities and their members. . . . I liked Dr. Boyko and Dr. Habicht very much, but from their point of view, my usefulness would be to raise money to enable them to make a year’s study for their report. . . . Their need for delay seems even a bigger hump than the hump the Washington Post gave us to hurdle.

Two weeks later, she wrote again: “I have not heard from you since Beirut and my last letter was a cry for ‘Help!’ I am waiting for your advice about the World Academy, and whether I should go ahead with the art auction. . .?”

From his summer home on Bear Island, Maine, Fuller replied that Ambassador and Mrs. Rossides had appeared there “in the wilderness,” on the same day the “cry for help” letter arrived. Together, they had re-read all the documents, including the letters from Boyko to Makarios, and it was “not as bad news as it at first seemed.”

Fuller had written to John McHale, who was in turn making it clear to Boyko, that there were several alternative trustee bodies that would be just as appropriate as the WAAS, but he found the WAAS roster of members impressive. Fuller himself recently had been accepted as a Fellow of the WAAS, along with Dr. Doxiadis, head of the Architectural College of Athens. Doxiadis gave their program his vigorous support, and “since . . . [he] deals with the high powers of Cyprus, this is good news,” Fuller reported.

I am confident that everything is in good shape. . . . I am also confident that Caresse Crosby . . . will be in a leading position of authority in respect to . . . the World Man Center . . . the unique consequence of her long years of dedicated work. . . . Very dear Caresse, I am sure that in taking the responsibility of being your advisor in your great undertaking that I am not going to let you down.

In October, the World Man Center received one encouraging letter from Philip Isely, Secretary-general of the World Constitutional Convention, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado. Isely asked Caresse to serve on the World Committee of the WCC as a member from Italy, her official residence. She preferred to represent Cyprus—“I actually own some land on Cyprus, aside from the World Man Center”—and would seek the approval of President Makarios on her next visit to the island. The fact that the WCC and other world organizations accepted Caresse into their membership shows that her efforts were highly regarded by those in positions of authority—that her activities were not viewed as the hobbies of a dilettante.

Just after the 1967 New Year, Caresse drew up a Cyprus Plan of Action. She listed the people and organizations to contact for loans and/or advice: the American Ambassador to Cyprus, Toby Belcher; Aristotle Onassis (“who is already interested”); the Hilton hotels and TWA (for an airlift from Nicosia to Kyrenia); Hormousias, editor of Kathimerini, the Athens newspaper; the president of the Bank of Greece; and Constantinos Doxiadis.

Her son-in-law, Polleen’s then-husband Stephen Drysdale, was among British investors in a Belgian real estate venture on Cyprus, which, Caresse observed, could also be a point in favor of keeping Cyprus peaceful. The Ford Foundation had expressed interest in World Man, but they would have to wait to appeal to other foundations until tax-exempt status was granted.

In addition, she proposed a Cypriot referendum to determine the greatest needs—schools, hospitals, roads? She supported the plan submitted to U Thant by the Parliamentarians for World Government to offer a military unit from Cyprus as part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, thereby replacing the British troops on the island.

In first place on Caresse’s agenda was the art auction to be held in New York in October to raise funds for Fuller’s geodesic dome. Robert Dowling, owner of the handsome East Side venue of the Parke-Bernet Gallery, promised Caresse that she might hold the auction there. Lorraine de Mun, acting as secretary to the art committee, was sending out letters from headquarters to prospective donors.

World Man at this gateway between East and West [is] . . . a meeting place for the arts. . . . World artists are spearheading this endeavor. Will you accept this invitation to participate by offering your work? . . .

William de Kooning and Isamu Noguchi gladly consented to donate their works for the auction. Dali suggested that Caresse might call upon some of the wealthy owners of his works to contribute. (He still held tight to his dollars.)

Caresse next wrote to Picasso at his atelier in Vallauris in the South of France:

You once wrote, and I published in Portfolio II: “A painting is not an object to frame and hang upon the wall, it is rather a weapon with which to fight the enemy.” Ever since that time, I have been dreaming that dream, that the artist must come into the arena from his ivory tower to save the world. . . .

Now I am writing to ask you to help us with your genius in the fight to save the world from holocaust. . . . Could you donate one of your paintings for the auction, or do a special poster, an original Picasso, on the theme, “One World or None”?

Throughout the summer, Lorraine at headquarters kept in touch with Caresse in Italy with a barrage of warm and affectionate letters:

I am absolutely thrilled that you are going to be in America on October 8 . . . in ten days I shall be seeing you! I spread the good news to Mrs. Rossides as soon as I got the letter, so Zenon and Mrs. Simpson will have been notified by now. I do love you, Gran. . . . My job is still going very well and as soon as the government grant comes through I shall be making a lot of money and shall be able to take you to Quo Vadis for lunch. I daren’t ask you for dinner as I know you will have millions of beaux as soon as you set foot in New York.

Oodles and oodles of World Love, Lorraine

In July, Caresse was involved with the contretemps that erupted between Fuller and Rufus King, who suggested that World Man should be confined to a smaller area of land. Fuller wrote to Rossides:

Rufus King is an excellent lawyer but his astronomical hypothesis is incorrect. . . . There are no fixed points in space. . . The World Man Center’s 200 donums of land . . . is a spot on the surface of the 8000-mile diameter spherical space-ship Earth. . . . It is obviously impossible to refer to “our airspace.” There is no static space. There are no straight lines. There are only geodesic relationships.

In Fuller’s view, laws made by human beings “do not give humans the power to substitute their futile hypotheses for the physical laws governing universal behavior . . . The word ‘sovereignty’ was invented by weapons-wielding bullies who asserted and maintained with their swords and guns their claims to perpetual ownership over various lands of the spherical space-ship Earth . . .”

If King’s idea of reducing the ceded area to an infinitely small spot were acted upon, Fuller repeated, “there will be no need for a dome umbrella, and I will immediately withdraw . . . Our joint acts of last summer can only prosper if we succeed in keeping the 200 donums utterly uncompromised for at least fifty years.” He ended the letter to Rossides on a pessimistic note: “The chances of man’s survival on the spherical spaceship Earth are in great jeopardy.”

Bucky and his wife, Anne, went to the official opening of Expo ’67 in Montreal that summer. He wrote to Caresse that they were “overjoyed by the reception of the Dome.” Fuller’s son-in-law, cinematographer Robert Snyder, described the Expo Dome “as a three-quarter sphere”, in which the walls start going away from you. [It] has the extraordinary psychological effect of releasing you, for you suddenly realize that the walls are not really there. . . . Something is keeping the rain away, like an umbrella, but you don’t feel shut in, you feel protected.”

In Fuller’s view, the Dome demonstrated “the doing so much more with less for all humanity . . . World Man will realize that his salvation on space-ship Earth is to be gained by such a design revolution and not by political revolution . . .” The Dome was also a monument to Fuller’s wife in the year of their 50th wedding anniversary. “I have brought about the production of our own Taj Majal as pure fall-out of my love for you [Anne],” Bucky wrote.

Caresse was distressed to hear news of the tragic accident that temporarily suspended Fuller’s efforts on behalf of World Man. After the Fullers returned to New York, the airport taxi in which they were riding at high speed skidded on a rainy street, crashing against a bridge abutment and bouncing across the highway. Neither Fuller nor the taxi driver was hurt, but Anne suffered severe damage, including two brain hemorrhages. After a siege in intensive care when her life was in danger and an even longer hospital stay, Anne recovered. But it was another of the many cruel blows of fate that stalked Fuller throughout his life.

That summer, Caresse also invited Garry Davis to serve on the steering committee of the Cyprus project. The young man who surrendered his U.S. passport in Paris to become a Citizen of the World in the ’40s was a delegate to the World Citizens’ Committee meeting in Wolfach, Switzerland, when Caresse caught up with him to ask if he would be coming to Italy during the summer: “We must have a talk. I thought the letter you wrote to the Herald Tribune was very fine, and as you know our beliefs are the same on that subject.”

In September, Caresse requested a progress report on the WAAS from John McHale, now serving as executive director of Fuller’s World Resources Inventory at Southern Illinois University. McHale replied that “I have no further information. . . . The WAAS has not . . . accepted trusteeship, but merely indicated that they may do so when the land is ceded and funds have been secured for the operation of the Center.” In McHale’s view, the Arab-Israeli conflict might influence the WAAS’s cautionary stance—Cyprus seemed anxious to engage in the conflict just before it came to an end. The official attitude of the Cypriot government was incompatible with sympathy for World Man or peace.

Despite hovering war clouds, early in 1968 Caresse was in Beirut again, on a stopover en route to Cyprus. She wrote to Fuller that she had gotten the impression that “many English promoters already have their eye on Kyrenia.” Noel-Baker, one of the Parliamentarians for World Government, was anxious to know how to proceed in seeking the trusteeship. To Rossides, still in New York, she wrote:

Dear Zenon:

I am waiting here in Beirut to join you in Cyprus . . . impatiently, because I know that both the American ambassador in Cyprus, Toby Belcher, and the British High Commissioner as well as the heads of the NATO College in Rome are anxious to hear more about the World Man Center and are very much in favor. . . . I am being written to from all parts of the world asking for information on World Man and I am anxious to get on with it. The interest shown by the Belgian group of promoters who might put money into real estate . . . is important. . . . It is my son-in-law who is interested in this group and hopes to meet me soon in Kyrenia. I gather that you do not want me to return to Nicosia without you—therefore I am flying to Jerusalem on Monday and will stay there until you are able to leave New York. . . .

She added that “Everyone in Athens was praising Makarios for his One World project.”

On the return journey, she again stopped over in Beirut and wrote to Rossides: “What a pleasure to see you in Nicosia, and how delightful to have another visit with His Beatitude.” She was giving considerable thought to the status of World Man:

If I understood you correctly, you think World Man should raise the necessary money before the land is transferred by the Cyprus Government. For my part, I think the land should be deeded to and accepted by the World Man Center, contingent upon our raising the money. This may seem like a minor difference to you, but it is a major difference to me. I would have much more difficulty getting the consent of artists and others to donate works to be auctioned if I did not have a document from the Government of Cyprus transferring a specific piece of land. I don’t think that any artist—even my good friends—would contribute their work to be auctioned off without such a document.

She ended the letter prophetically, “I am impatient, there is so little time.”

Caresse’s host in Beirut, John Fistere, wrote to Philip Isely in Denver: “I am not sure exactly what I promised Caresse I would do in connection with the World Constitutional Convention, but what ever I said I would do, I will most certainly try to do. It is so easy to promise Caresse anything.”

•

In May, she heard from John McHale in Carbondale:

I have nothing to report from the WAAS. . . . My colleagues in the World Academy have assumed that the project has been abandoned in view of the involvements of Cyprus in the present Middle East crisis. . . . I can appreciate your disappointment after the time and energy you have expended in this venture, but I am sure that the personal idealism which this reflects will find some equally worthwhile undertaking in our presently troubled world. . . .

Caresse was indeed relieved to keep the World Academy of Art and Science out of the picture. “WAAS’s interest, I believe, is not wholly for One World led by artists, poets, and humanitarians of the earth, but may have a complicated political bias.” Michael Lekakis supported her stand:

I am not altogether convinced that something is there for artists—World Man seems to be a peace project. World Man artists can have a voice if organizable people will let them. The nature of creativity is against it. Lao Tze said the best government is possible when no-one wants to govern. Under present conditions, everyone wants to govern.

She proposed, as an alternative, representatives of other international organizations—the League for the Rights of Man, the Fellowship of World Citizens, the International Court of Justice at The Hague, the Humanist Society, followers of Gandhi for non-violence, the University Round Table, Parliamentarians for World Government, the Committee for a World Constitutional Convention, and the Cypriot Development and Tourism Office—with Archbishop Makarios and Rossides as over-all guardians of the project. Each of these groups or units would be given part of the 68 hectares of land, and leaders in each of the special fields would seek funds to construct their own units, using Cypriot labor. “It is to be hoped that U Thant could start a training school on Cyprus for a world police force, which has always been envisaged by those planning for eventual world government.”

In a letter to Rossides, Caresse outlined her grandiose plan for an art center, a world library, a world institute of research “to feed and house the exploding population of the earth,” and a “one-world basilica for the religious and humanist expressions of mankind . . . under Bucky’s dome.”

“Why not announce that all Cyprus will be ceded to World Man,” she suggested, “giving to the artists and scientists of the world the opportunity to work out Man’s destiny, free from the conflicting ideologies on Cyprus? President Makarios would go down in history as the greatest World Citizen of them all.” (Lord Bertrand Russell, Mrs. Rajan Nehru, and Professor Linus Pauling were among the 13 world leaders who had signed up, at that date, with World Man.)

Meanwhile, the island continued to fulfill its historic destiny as a place of conflict, with the Greek Cypriot struggle taking place against the backdrop of the broader crisis in the Middle East, the civil war in Lebanon. At the United Nations Assembly, Cyprus was an active member of the Afro-Asian group (though there could be no one more European than the chief Cypriot delegate, Zenon Rossides). The Archbishop attended two summit conferences with the nonaligned countries, and developed a close relationship with President Nasser of the United Arab Republic. Makarios’s policies were not popular with Turkey, Greece, or the United States, all of which supported NATO. But Caresse herself backed the Archbishop. “As President Makarios said to the press, the Center will help the inevitable trend toward One World accord.”

She wrote to Rossides that “This World Man territory is to be protected by a United Nations police force and kept free from all national interference by NATO forces; not to be stationed on Cyprus.” In her view, Cyprus would be a good testing ground for the disarmament agreements between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. “It will undoubtedly have to be One World or none, and time grows short.” Despite the problems in the Middle East, “I still want to try to establish the Center at Kyrenia.”

In February, Caresse was enroute to Beirut again with Robert Boone, the aide-de-camp, she wrote to Rossides: “On or about March 14 we plan to fly over to Cyprus to spend a day or two at the Ledra Palace . . . [then] Bob will drive me around the island. You know I have never been to Famagusta or to many other interesting towns, nor seen the home of the Marine Venus. I will be a tourist.” While sightseeing on Cyprus, Caresse discovered an historic plaque attached to the wall of the Government Cottage near a small village in the Troödos mountains—all pine trees, bracken, and red earth:

Arthur Rimbaud, poète et génie français au mépris de sa rénomée contribua de ses propres mains à la construction de cette maison MDCCCLXXXI.

An early British High Commissioner had engaged Rimbaud, a self-described vagabond aux semelles de vent, to supervise construction of the summer cottage there. Rimbaud had starved in Paris, survived attempted murder by his friend Verlaine, grown rich in Africa, joined the French Army, and deserted to the West Indies to trade in gold, ivory, coffee, and spices. When he landed in Larnaca five months before the British troops, he was 24 and poor, glad to pick up 150 francs a month to take charge of Cypriot laborers quarrying stone near the village of Vorokline. What curious happenstance that Caresse’s destiny led her to the young rebel who was Harry Crosby’s idol, whose poetry Harry emulated.

After the week in Cyprus, Caresse stopped off at another place close to her heart. She described her visit to Madame Alexi Stephanou at the Greek Embassy on Cyprus.

Our trip back via Delphi was most heartwarming. . . . All the blossoms on the almonds were in full bloom, a sea of white, on the crest of the hill where the Amphictyony used to meet in 470 B.C. [It] was radiant with promise for the world. I was given an ovation by the village—the Mayor and the Chief of Police said they wished me to become an honorary citizen of Delphi—so I was very happy. The four years of exile were worth the return.

Back in Rome, she discovered important new developments in the World Man project. Philip Isely had arranged to let the Center use its tax-exempt status. She wrote to Rossides:

We can raise money for the school, the library and art gallery on land at Kyrenia, using the Association for Human Emergence, Inc. [of WCC] as our tax exemption claim, allowing them to declare their world government from the World Man Center under Bucky’s dome at Kyrenia, with the assurance that a protective world police training school will function there also.

Max Habicht, who helped to draw up the Declaration for a World Government at the Wolfach Conference, offered to meet Caresse in Rome to discuss ways and means of declaring the World Man Center extraterritorial if Caresse would provide a round-trip air ticket.

Another project for World Man was taking shape through the efforts of John Foster in London. Jacques Cousteau, the French oceanographer, was looking for a friendly government to cooperate in an exciting new venture. Foster proposed that Cyprus might offer its offshore shelf of the ocean to Cousteau. Doxiadis was already working on a plan for an undersea city.

I have written to Bucky asking him if he can build underwater. . . . It would be a great coup if Cyprus could initiate the project. It would be a protection for Cyprus as well as a great step forward. The ocean bed can yield so many marvelous treasures and provide a source for feeding and protecting the world from atmospheric assault.

Caresse was again a woman ahead of her time in voicing environmental concerns.

On March 8, she wrote to the Archbishop, asking for “the honor of meeting with you again.”

The purpose of my visit would be a final discussion of a possible date later this year for an announcement that a plot of land is being given near Kyrenia for the establishment of a World Man Center. . . .

Ever since the general agreement in 1966 between you, Ambassador Rossides, Dr. Fuller and myself to proceed over the Kyrenia project, I have been obtaining promises from artists all over the world to contribute their works to a fund-raising project for the World Man Center. What is needed is the signing of the deed for the property as evidence to the contributors that the project is going ahead. I hope that Your Beatitude will be able to give me that assurance and fix a date for the public signing of the deed.

Life and other mass-media publications requested advance notice of the meeting, to give “the whole Kyrenia project the attention . . . it deserves.”

Caresse was welcomed by Makarios, “who was as polite and charming as ever.” However, as she wrote to Lekakis, “he made it quite clear that he must see ‘the color of my gold’ before any signature was given to cede the property at Kyrenia to World Man.” There were other unforeseen problems:

I believe that since the land that Makarios offered belongs to the Church, and since Makarios is the Head of the Orthodox Church in Cyprus, it is possible for him to remove his sovereignty from the 68 acres—but is it actually enough to accept the Cypriot land as World land? I have always felt that it should be something that was voted upon and granted by the Government of Cyprus.

The Minister of Justice informed Caresse that the Cypriot Government, which includes the Turks and other minorities, would not by any means be willing to cede land. “I was, perhaps, too trusting” she wrote, “and that is possibly why the land I chose in the first place, and for which I paid half, was outside of Church property and therefore unacceptable to Makarios.” Caresse was reminded of the debacle at Delphi. “I was judged by the [Greek] Supreme Court in plenum session and the verdict was that as a private citizen I might keep my land in Delphi, but not express any World or Socratic ideas there. . . . They judged me as a sovereign power and not as an individual. So, history repeats itself.”

Rossides appeared to be subtly withdrawing his support of the Center. Caresse wrote:

I think that perhaps the best solution, if you cannot accept my principles . . . is for the Archbishop to cede or assign to me as World Citizen the eight acres (for which I paid $2,000) within the 68 acres allotted on the outskirts of Belle Pais, which site you and I chose in 1965 and for which I hold President Makarios’ cancelled check. On these eight acres I could offer the sovereignty to the League for the Rights of Man, Women Against War, or the youth movement of Citizens of the World, which embraces all creeds, colors, faiths and ideologies for peace versus violence. I must not be kept in the dark as to what is being done in the name of World Man Center, Inc., of which I am president.

She asked Mike Lekakis to call on Rossides to give her a candid report. Lekakis replied that “[Rossides] asked me to reassure you about World Man on Cyprus. It is your idea, and that will be respected beyond any question. He regrets that he was not present in Cyprus when you went there. The problem evidently is that Mr. Rossides has not been able to explain your position to the Archbishop.”

Rossides mistakenly assumed that Caresse herself had great wealth and would be able to endow the Center with a substantial sum. “However I am sure that the Archbishop is not interested in ‘the color of gold’ as such, but in implementing the World Man Center.” Lekakis wrote. An anonymous donor, a Cypriot woman, had given $200,000, but so far, no one else had come through.

With no precedent and no history, “[World Man] must be justified to the people of Cyprus, and that means Greek, Turks, Armenians, Jews, and many others. Mr. Rossides has been the catalyst and his performance has been remarkable thus far.” If—in her view—Caresse (as she perceived it) had been put in an awkward position, the $2,000 would be returned with no strings attached.

You still remain the one who inspired the World Man Center in Cyprus. You should not be discouraged by the indirectness with which these matters have been put together. It seems to me that under the circumstances, it cannot be otherwise. Somehow ideas take their own form, and going along with them, our experience and knowledge have the opportunity to give [them] the most noble form.

Rossides himself wrote later to Caresse that “World Man has all along been in my mind, and we are certainly not abandoning it.” He reassured her that Archbishop Makarios was prepared to carry out his part of the agreement, as stated in the public announcement of July 1966. “Needless to say, if the project in Cyprus is achieved, you will have a preeminent position in it, and your recognition will be universal. The idea and the dedicated efforts over the years for the attainment of this goal are yours, my dear Caresse, and you certainly deserve all honor.”

In September, Caresse heard from Fuller that “The Cyprus potential is too important now to be treated lightly.” He had attended a luncheon meeting with Rossides, U Thant, both the Turkish and Greek ambassadors to the United Nations, the president of Columbia University, and a half-dozen other important people interested in Cyprus. One of Fuller’s primary concerns was the danger of leaving the World Man territory unprotected. “International gamblers with armed guards might move in and be extraordinarily difficult to dislodge.” Rossides had proposed to U Thant a 50-year United Nations trusteeship, with the U.N. providing a small special guard for Cyprus, in addition to its regular armed forces.

Both the Greek and the Turkish ambassadors agreed that the World Man Center might pour oil on troubled waters and provide comfort to Cypriots divided by conflict. They also discussed the possibility of enlarging World Man territory to include all Cyprus, and “officially recognized” Caresse as the pioneer—together with Makarios—in initiating World Man. The donation of the critical matching fund of $200,000 eliminated the necessity of holding the art auction, but Fuller suggested that already-pledged artists’ works might be displayed at the Center.

Fuller, who was invited to give the Nehru memorial lecture, had stopped off in India en route to Cyprus to discuss World Man with Prime Minister Gandhi. With the support of a major nation like India at the U.N., Fuller suggested, they might consider issuing a “World Man Territory” passport. He projected that “millions, if not billions, of young people around the world will apply for such passports and identify themselves as ‘World Humans’.”

I think well of my fellow man. I admire all those who dedicate themselves to the elimination of wars, but I am personally convinced that . . . any special idea group operating within the framework of present . . . political structures can only add to the voices of all history that have decried destruction and injustice. I do not expect them to have much effect. Nations must go . . . because their functions are rendered evolutionarily obsolete.

Caresse viewed Fuller’s use of the term “World Man” to replace “World Citizen” as a great ideological leap forward . . . “It is comprehensive and philosophical and could inspire the young more than any other term. . . . You have gone Socrates one better, for which I congratulate, admire, and love you,” she wrote.

Several points in Fuller’s letter puzzled her, especially the thought that the Center should be placed under the trusteeship of the United Nations. “I am anti-nationalist and I pray that the beautiful idea conceived for Cyprus with Zenon and Makarios in 1957 when His Beatitude was still in exile in Athens will not now be taken over by a body of nations, with the largest nation, China, not even recognized . . . I see only arguments and discord . . .”

In her last letter to Rossides, Caresse was still carrying the torch. As if she had a premonition of her own passing from the scene, she asked: “Who will be carrying on the organizing, the coordinating, the deeding of the land?”

I may have spoken too strongly about a United Nations armed force being caretakers of the Center, but I feel very strongly on this point. I suggest a triumvirate of: His Beatitude or you Zenon of Kitium, for Cyprus; U Thant, a United World of people, not nations; and Bucky the scientist and bookkeeper and prime coordinator, to be caretakers . . . a directorate of five or seven individuals but not an unwieldy amount—the League for the Rights of Man, the Federalists, the World Citizens . . . would be represented.

At the time of her death, Caresse was still actively involved with promoting the World Man Center on Cyprus, though she must have known that her larger dream might never be realized:

My alternative is that I accept the few acres that His Beatitude and I bought above Belle Pais and build myself a small house with a courtyard just big enough for a “Soglia di Pace.” . . . I do not want my $2,000 back, it must remain there in the spirit in which I gave it. I am sorry I did not turn out to be a millionairess, but I never was. . . . faith and love and venture are the values I’ve built my life on. I don’t think they are going to fail on Cyprus.

Caresse never built the small house with a courtyard. Her Soglia di Pace found a home in a 15th century castello, larger than even her most grandiose dreams.