proceeds, Poland will devote it to fulfilling towards all her neighbors the military role which France has designed for her, the governing classes of Roumania will divide up the booty amongst themselves.  In short, America would have postponed her own capital developments and raised her own cost of living in order that Europe might continue for another year or two the practices, the policy, and the men of the past nine months.  And as for assistance to Germany, is it reasonable or at all tolerable that the European Allies, having stripped Germany of her last vestige of working capital, in opposition to the arguments and appeals of the American financial representatives at Paris, should then turn to the United States for funds to rehabilitate the victim in sufficient measure to allow the spoliation to recommence in a year or two?

There is no answer to these objections as matters are now.  If I had influence at the United States Treasury, I would not lend a penny to a single one of the present Governments of Europe.  They are not to be trusted with resources which they would devote to the furtherance of policies in repugnance to which, in spite of the President’s failure to assert either the might or the ideals of the people of the United States, the Republican and the Democratic parties are probably united.  But if, as we must pray they will, the souls of the European peoples turn away this winter from the false idols which have survived the war that created them, and substitute in their hearts for the hatred and the nationalism, which now possess them, thoughts and hopes of the happiness and solidarity of the European family,—­then should natural piety and filial love impel the American people to put on one side all the smaller objections of private advantage and to complete the work, that they began in saving Europe from the tyranny of organized force, by saving her from herself.  And even if the conversion is not fully accomplished, and some parties only in each of the European countries have espoused a policy of reconciliation, America can still point the way and hold up the hands of the party of peace by having a plan and a condition on which she will give her aid to the work of renewing life.

The impulse which, we are told, is now strong in the mind of the United States to be quit of the turmoil, the complication, the violence, the expense, and, above all, the unintelligibility of the European problems, is easily understood.  No one can feel more intensely than the writer how natural it is to retort to the folly and impracticability of the European statesmen,—­Rot, then, in your own malice, and we will go our way—­

    Remote from Europe; from her blasted hopes;
    Her fields of carnage, and polluted air.

But if America recalls for a moment what Europe has meant to her and still means to her, what Europe, the mother of art and of knowledge, in spite of everything, still is and still will be, will she not reject these counsels of indifference and isolation, and interest herself in what may prove decisive issues for the progress and civilization of all mankind?