withhold this boon from
humanity.

If it does refuse and wars continue--if, within the coming decade, war
should break out, whether actually involving the United States itself or
not, more bloody and destructive than any that the world has seen--and
if then the facts should be presented to posterity for judgment,--will
the American people be held guiltless? It is improbable that the case
ever could be so presented, for there is none to put the United States
on trial, none to draw an indictment, none to prosecute. The world has
not turned to the United States to ask that it be saved; no one has
arisen to point at the United States and say, "Thou art the one to do
this thing." The historians of another generation will have no
depositions before them on which to base a verdict. But if the facts are
as stated and the United States knows them to be so, does the lack of
common knowledge of them make her responsibility any the less? It
remains that the nation has the power to do this, and it alone among
nations.

* * * * *

The first idea of most Americans, when a hard and fast alliance with
Great Britain is suggested to them, usually formulates itself in the
statement that they have no wish to be made into a cat's-paw for pulling
England's chestnuts out of the fire. America has no desire to be drawn
into England's quarrels. Until less than ten years ago, there was
justification for the point of view; for while England seemed to be
ever on the brink of war, the United States lived peacefully in her
far-off Valley of Avilion. But the map of the world has changed, and
while the United States has left her seclusion and come out to play her
part in the world-politics, England has been buttressing herself with
friendships, until it is at least arguable whether the United States is
not the more exposed to danger of the two. But it is no question now of
being dragged into other people's quarrels; but of making all
quarrelling impossible.

Again, the American will say that the United States needs no allies. She
can hold her own; let Great Britain do the same. And again I say that it
is no question now of whether either Power can hold its own against the
world or not. Great Britain, Americans should understand, has no more
fear for herself than has the United States. England "does not seek
alliances: she grants them." There is not only no single European Power,
but there is no probable combination of