follow us.  We ought to find a way to use them in cleaning up the tropics under our leadership and under our code of ethics—­that everything must be done for the good of the tropical peoples and that nobody may annex a foot of land.  They want a job.  Then they’d quit sitting on their haunches, growling at one another.

I wonder if we couldn’t serve notice that the land-stealing game is forever ended and that the cleaning up of backward lands is now in order—­for the people that live there; and then invite Europe’s help to make the tropics as healthful as the Panama Zone?

There’s no future in Europe’s vision—­no long look ahead.  They give all their thought to the immediate danger.  Consider this Balkan War; all European energy was spent merely to keep the Great Powers at peace.  The two wars in the Balkans have simply impoverished the people—­left the world that much worse than it was before.  Nobody has considered the well-being or the future of those peoples nor of their land.  The Great Powers are mere threats to one another, content to check, one the other!  There can come no help to the progress of the world from this sort of action—­no step forward.

     Work on a world-plan.  Nothing but blue chips, you know.  Is it not
     possible that Mexico may give an entering wedge for this kind of
     thing?

     Heartily yours,
     WALTER H. PAGE.

In a memorandum, written about the same time, Mr. Page explains his idea in more detail: 

Was there ever greater need than there is now of a first-class mind unselfishly working on world problems?  The ablest ruling minds are engaged on domestic tasks.  There is no world-girdling intelligence at work in government.  On the continent of Europe, the Kaiser is probably the foremost man.  Yet he cannot think far beyond the provincial views of the Germans.  In England, Sir Edward Grey is the largest-visioned statesman.  All the Europeans are spending their thought and money in watching and checkmating one another and in maintaining their armed and balanced status quo.

A way must be found out of this stagnant watching.  Else a way will have to be fought out of it; and a great European war would set the Old World, perhaps the whole world, back a long way; and thereafter, the present armed watching would recur; we should have gained nothing.  It seems impossible to talk the Great Powers out of their fear of one another or to “Hague” them out of it.  They’ll never be persuaded to disarm.  The only way left seems to be to find some common and useful work for these great armies to do.  Then, perhaps, they’ll work themselves out of their jealous position.  Isn’t this sound psychology?

To produce a new situation, the vast energy that now spends itself in maintaining armies and navies must find a new outlet.  Something new must be found for them to do, some great unselfish task that they can do together.

     Nobody can lead in such a new era but the United States.