Do you realize that, roughly speaking, we are the only great nation at
present disengaged? I am not speaking, of course, with disparagement of
the greater of those nations in Europe which are not parties to the
present war, but I am thinking of their close neighborhood to it. I am
thinking how their lives much more than ours touch the very heart and
stuff of the business; whereas, we have rolling between us and those
bitter days across the water three thousand miles of cool and silent
ocean.
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.
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