erprise.

America at the same time is placed in an extra-hazardous position,
between the two seas beyond which to either side lie the two Imperial
Powers whose place in the modern economy of nations it is to disturb the
peace in an insatiable quest of dominion. This position is no longer
defensible in isolation, under the later state of the industrial arts,
and the policy of isolation that has guided the national policy hitherto
is therefore falling out of date. The question is as to the manner of
its renunciation, rather than the fact of it. It may end in a defensive
copartnership with other nations who are placed on the defensive by the
same threatening situation, or it may end in a bootless struggle for
independence, but the choice scarcely extends beyond this alternative.
It will be said, of course, that America is competent to take care of
itself and its Monroe doctrine in the future as in the past. But that
view, spoken for cogently by thoughtful men and by politicians looking
for party advantage, overlooks the fact that the modern technology has
definitively thrown the advantage to the offensive, and that intervening
seas can no longer be counted on as a decisive obstacle. On this latter
head, what was reasonably true fifteen years ago is doubtful today, and
it is in all reasonable expectation invalid for the situation fifteen
years hence.

The other peoples that are of a neutral temper may need the help of
America sorely enough in their endeavours to keep the peace, but
America's need of cooperation is sorer still, for the Republic is coming
into a more precarious place than any of the others. America is also, at
least potentially, the most democratic of the greater Powers, and is
handicapped with all the disabilities of a democratic commonwealth in
the face of war. America is also for the present, and perhaps for the
calculable future, the most powerful of these greater Powers, in point
of conceivably available resources, though not in actually available
fighting-power; and the entrance of America unreservedly into a neutral
league would consequently be decisive both of the purposes of the league
and of its efficiency for the purpose; particularly if the
neutralisation of interests among the members of the league were carried
so far as to make withdrawal and independent action disadvantageous.

On the establishment of such a neutral league, with such neutralisation
of national interests as would assure concer