these factors, however, have contributed to our changed point
of view, it was the World War which most completely revealed to
Americans the necessity of accommodating our national development to
that of other countries. The war proved that we were in a military
sense vulnerable; that undisciplined citizen soldiery was no match for
trained armies; that mere distance is no complete safety, and that the
initial advantage, which accrues to the prepared nation is out of all
proportion more valuable than later victories. The war showed that
unarmed neutrality and a mere lack of hostile intention does not always
save a nation from invasion. Moreover, we discovered that our
interests were affected favourably or adversely by a conflict, in which
we had no direct part. We, who had always conceived ourselves as a
supremely disinterested nation, a remote island in the blue sea, began
{58} to ask whether it was to our advantage to have France defeated,
Belgium destroyed, Germany crushed, the British Empire disintegrated.
We began to ask how our national interest was affected by the
international competition for colonies, by the freedom or unfreedom of
the seas, by the extension of the right of blockade, by the abrogation
of established laws of warfare; and what the effect upon us would be of
an economic alliance against Germany by the Allied Western Powers. In
other words, we discovered a real national interest in international
arrangements created by the war or to be established after the war.

Our first preoccupation was naturally one of defence. We looked
outward, but only saw armed nations ready to seize upon our wealth and
territory. Responsible authors predicted that the victor in this war
would at his leisure move across the ocean and despoil the United
States. From ponderous puerilities of this sort to the lurid
descriptions of massacre and pillage, vouchsafed us by magazine and
moving picture writers, was a short step. More serious arguments
prevailed, and in the end a large addition was made to our military and
naval forces. But the whole campaign was based solely upon the theory
of defence, and the theory so formulated, was merely a continuation of
the policy of isolation. It involved the idea that we were to act
alone and protect ourselves alone against all nations. It did not
concern itself with our national aims. It was not based upon a
definition of our relations to Europe and to the several nations of
E