Chapter VI: Part 6

A knowledge of history might also prove serviceable in enabling us to recognize our place and our responsibility among the nations of the world. No remoteness (geographical remoteness counts for little in the twentieth century) can sever our interests from the interests of Europe, or lift from our shoulders the burden of helping to sustain the collective rights of mankind. We know now that the menace of frightfulness has overshadowed us. We know that, however cautiously we picked our steps, we could not, and did not, escape molestation. But even if we had saved our own skin, if we had suffered no destruction of property, and if none of our dead lay under the water, the freedom of Europe, the future of democracy, and the rights of man would be to us matters of concern.

It is true, moreover, that friendship and alliance with those European states whose aspirations and ideals respond to our own aspirations and ideals, are as consistent with Americanism as are friendship and alliance with the states of South America, which we are now engaged in loving. It is not from Bolivia, or Chile, or Venezuela, or the Argentine that we have drawn our best traditions, our law, language, literature, and art. We extend to these “sister Republics” the arms of commercial affection; but they have no magic words like Magna Charta and _le Tiers État_ to stir our souls an inch beyond self-profit. When we count up our assets, we must reckon heavily on the respect of those nations which we most respect, and whose good-will in the past is a guarantee of good-will in the future. It is worth our while, even from the standpoint of Americanism, to prove our fellowship with humanity, our care for other interests than our own. The civilization of the world is the business of all who live in the world. We cannot see it crashing down, as it crashed in the sinking of the Lusitania and the Ancona, and content ourselves with asking how many Americans were drowned. Noble standards, and noble sympathies, and noble sorrows have their driving power, their practical utility. They have counted heavily in the destinies of nations. Carthage had commerce. Rome had ideals.

THE END

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Transcriber’s Note

A few minor punctuation and spelling errors have been silently corrected.