blic; and among those rules of conduct, there is none the wisdom of
which is more generally accepted by the people than that which enjoins
the avoidance of "entangling alliances" with foreign Powers. But not
only has the United States changed much in late years, but the world in
its political relations and sentiments has changed also and the place of
the United States has changed in it. That sacred instrument, the
Constitution itself, holds chiefly by virtue of what is new in it.
Whatever is unaltered, or is not interpreted in a sense quite other than
the framers intended, is to-day comparatively unimportant. It must be
so. It would be impossible that any code or constitution drawn up to
meet the needs of the original States, in the phase of civilisation and
amid the social conditions which then prevailed, could be suited to the
national life of a Great Power in the twentieth century. In internal
affairs, there is hardly a function of Government, scarcely a relation
between the different branches of the Government itself, or between the
Government and any of the several States, or between the Government and
the people, which is not unlike what the framers of the Constitution
intended or what they imagined that it would be.

But it is in external affairs that the nation must find, indeed has
found, the old rules most inadequate. The policy of non-association
which was desirable, even essential, to the young, weak state, whose
only prospect of safety lay in a preservation of that isolation which
her geographical position made possible to her, is and must be
impracticable in a World-Power. Within the last decade, the United
States has stepped out from her solitude to take the place which
rightfully belongs to her among the great peoples. By the acquirement of
her colonial dependencies, still more by the inevitable exigencies of
her commerce, she has chosen (as she had no other choice) to make
herself an interested party in the affairs of all parts of the world.
All the conditions that made the old policy best for her have vanished.

A child is rightly forbidden by his nurse to make acquaintance with
other children in the street; but this child has grown to manhood and
gone out into the world to seek--and has found--his fortune. The old
policy of isolation has been cast aside, till nothing remains of it but
a few old formulae which have no virtue--not even significance--now that
all the conditions to which they applied are