Powers out of
their fear of one another or to "Hague" them out of it. They'll
never be persuaded to disarm. The only way left seems to be to find
some common and useful work for these great armies to do. Then,
perhaps, they'll work themselves out of their jealous position.
Isn't this sound psychology?

To produce a new situation, the vast energy that now spends itself
in maintaining armies and navies must find a new outlet. Something
new must be found for them to do, some great unselfish task that
they can do together.

Nobody can lead in such a new era but the United States.

May there not come such a chance in Mexico--to clean out bandits,
yellow fever, malaria, hookworm--all to make the country
healthful, safe for life and investment, and for orderly
self-government at last? What we did in Cuba might thus be made the
beginning of a new epoch in history--conquest for the sole benefit
of the conquered, worked out by a sanitary reformation. The new
sanitation will reclaim all tropical lands; but the work must be
first done by military power--probably from the outside.

May not the existing military power of Europe conceivably be
diverted, gradually, to this use? One step at a time, as political
and financial occasions arise? As presently in Mexico?

This present order must change. It holds the Old World still. It
keeps all parts of the world apart, in spite of the friendly
cohesive forces of trade and travel. It keeps back self-government
and the progress of man.

And the tropics cry out for sanitation, which is at first an
essentially military task.

A strange idea this may have seemed in August, 1913, a year before the
outbreak of the European war; yet the scheme is not dissimilar to the
"mandatory" principle, adopted by the Versailles Peace Conference as the
only practical method of dealing with backward peoples. In this work, as
in everything that would help mankind on its weary way to a more
efficient and more democratic civilization, Page regarded the United
States, Great Britain, and the British Dominions as inevitable partners.
Anything that would bring these two nations into a closer cooeperation he
looked upon as a step making for human advancement. He believed that any
opportunity of sweeping away misconceptions and prejudices and of
impressing upon the two peoples th