Our atmosphere is not yet charged with those disturbing elements which must be felt and must permeate every nation of Europe.  Therefore, is it not likely that the nations of the world will some day turn to us for the cooler assessment of the elements engaged?

I am not now thinking so preposterous a thought as that we should sit in judgment upon them.  No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation, but that we shall some day have to assist in reconstructing the processes of peace.  Our resources are untouched; we are more and more becoming by the force of circumstances the mediating nation of the world in respect to its finances.  We must make up our minds what are the best things to do and what are the best ways to do them.

We must put our money, our energy, our enthusiasm, our sympathy into these things; and we must have our judgments prepared and our spirits chastened against the coming of that day.  So that I am not speaking in a selfish spirit when I say that our whole duty for the present, at any rate, is summed up in this motto, “America first.”  Let us think of America before we think of Europe, in order that America may be fit to be Europe’s friend when the day of tested friendship comes.  The test of friendship is not now sympathy with the one side or the other, but getting ready to help both sides when the struggle is over.

The basis of neutrality, gentlemen, is not indifference; it is not self-interest.  The basis of neutrality is sympathy for mankind.  It is fairness, it is good-will at bottom.  It is impartiality of spirit and of judgment.  I wish that all of our fellow-citizens could realize that.

There is in some quarters a disposition to create distempers in this body politic.  Men are even uttering slanders against the United States as if to excite her.  Men are saying that if we should go to war upon either side there will be a divided America—­an abominable libel of ignorance.  America is not all of it vocal just now.  It is vocal in spots.

But I for one have a complete and abiding faith in that great silent body of Americans who are not standing up and shouting and expressing their opinions just now, but are waiting to find out and support the duty of America.  I am just as sure of their solidity and of their loyalty and of their unanimity, if we act justly, as I am that the history of this country has at every crisis and turning point illustrated this great lesson.

We are the mediating nation of the world.  I do not mean that we undertake not to mind our own business and to mediate where other people are quarreling.  I mean the word in a broader sense.  We are compounded of the nations of the world.  We mediate their blood, we mediate their traditions, we mediate their sentiments, their tastes, their passions; we are ourselves compounded of those things.

We are, therefore, able to understand all nations; we are able to understand them in the compound, not separately, as partisans, but unitedly, as knowing and comprehending and embodying them all.  It is in that sense that I mean that America is a mediating nation.  The opinion of America, the action of America, is ready to turn and free to turn in any direction.