seaworthy to keep afloat.

Moreover, the patent evidences of weakness in the international
organization that we call civilization, the imperative need of ending
the spirit of moral anarchy, and the urgent necessity of rebuilding the
shattered ruins of the social edifice on surer foundations by the
integration of the nations, if possible, into some new form of world
organization, gives peculiar interest in these terrible days to the
manner in which the American people solved a similar problem more than a
century ago.

Then, as now, a world war had ended. Then, as now, half the world was
prostrated by the wounds of fratricidal strife. As Washington said: "The
whole world was in an uproar," and he added that the task "was to steer
safely between Scylla and Charybdis." The problem, then as now, was not
only to make "the world safe for democracy," but to make democracy, for
which there is no alternative, safe for the world. The thirteen colonies
in 1787, while small and relatively unimportant, were, however, a little
world in themselves, and, relatively to their numbers and resources,
this problem, which they confronted and solved, differed in degree but
not in kind from that which now confronts civilization. Impoverished in
resources, exhausted by the loss of the flower of their youth,
demoralized by the reaction from feverish strife, the forces of
disintegration had set in in the United States between 1783 and 1787.
Law and order had almost perished and the provisional government had
been reduced to impotence. A few wise and noble spirits, true Faithfuls
and Great Hearts, led a despondent people out of the Slough of Despond
till their feet were again on firm ground and their faces turned towards
the Delectable Mountains of peace, justice, and liberty. Let it be
emphasized that they did this, not by seeking more power, but by