If our policy,
in other words, is to be shrewd and enlightened, we must realize just
how both the views of international relationship that I have indicated
are wrong.

I will take first the more special one--that of the assumed necessary
rivalry of nations in trade--as its clearer understanding will help in
what is for us the larger problem of the general relationship of this
country to other civilized powers. I will therefore try and establish
first this proposition--that nations are not and can not be trade rivals
in the sense usually accepted; that, in other words, there is a
fundamental misconception in the prevailing picture of nations as
trading units--one might as well talk of red-haired people being the
trade rivals of black-haired people.

And I will then try and establish a second proposition, namely, that we
are intimately concerned with the condition of Europe, and are daily
becoming more so, owing to processes which have become an integral part
of our fight against nature, of the feeding and clothing of the world;
that we cannot much longer ignore the effects of those tendencies which
bind us to our neighbors; that the elementary consideration of
self-protection will sooner or later compel us to accept the facts and
recognize our part and lot in the struggles of Christendom; and that if
we are wise, we shall not take our part therein reluctantly, dragged at
the heels of forces we cannot resist, but will do so consciously,
anticipating events. In other words, we shall take advantage of such
measure of detachment as we do possess, to take the lead in a saner
organization of western civilization; we shall become the pivot and
centre of a new world State.

There is not the faintest hope of America taking this lead unless a push
or impetus is given to her action by a widespread public feeling, based
on the recognition of the fallacy of the two assumptions with which I
began this article. For if America really is independent of the rest of
the world, little concerned with what goes on therein, if she is in a
position to build a sort of Chinese wall about herself, and, secure in
her own strength, to develop a civilization and future of her own, still
more if the weakness and disintegration of foreign nations, however
unfortunate for them, is for America an opportunity of expanding trade
and opportunities, why then, of course, it would be the height of folly
for the United States to incur all the risks and uncer