h the shrinking of the earth's
surface. Our bulk, our resources and our remnant of inaccessibility
give us a weight in world affairs far in excess of our military power.
We are advancing in population, wealth and general education, and our
future progress in these directions is likely to be more rapid than
that of Western Europe. Moreover we are the only strong nation not
tied up in existing international enmities. Our hands are unbound.
How we shall act, therefore, whether we shall add to the complications
of Europe or aid in disentangling them, is a world as well as a
national problem.

In the main such national determinations are dependent upon great
economic forces, acting upon the nation from within and without. These
economic forces, however, do not work upon stones but upon those loose
bundles of {3} instincts, reactions, ideals and prejudices that we call
men. We need not dig deep into American history to uncover the human
elements that will influence our decision. On the surface of our life
appear two strong tendencies pulling in opposite directions.

It is easier to describe than to define these tendencies. The first we
might perhaps call pacifism, liberalism, humanitarianism, democracy,
though none of these words exactly defines the generous, somewhat
ineffectual, peace ideal, which has grown up in a democratic people
with no hostile neighbours. At this moment by the light of the
European camp-fires we are likely to belittle this easy do-nothing
idealism. We find our idealists prosaic. They are not gaunt fanatics
consumed by their own passion, but hard-working, self-respecting,
religiously inclined men, asking good prices and high wages, eating
good food, wearing good clothes and perhaps running a Ford automobile.
To some of these meliorists, Europe seems almost as distant as China,
but towards the peoples of both places they preserve a vague and
benevolent missionary attitude. They want peace with Europe and peace
for Europe, and would even be willing to pay for it, as they pay for
relief for Belgium and Martinique. There is little passion in this
good-will but there is even less hypocrisy. One may ridicule this
cornfed, tepid idealism, but it is none the less the raw material out
of which great national purposes are formed. The present desire of
Americans for a world peace is no vaguer or more ineffectual than was
the seemingly faint sense of the wickedness of slavery, as it existed
in our N