Canal, the Philippine Islands, or Long Island and the Port of New York."
Why not? The Atlantic Ocean is only a mill-pond. It is not half so wide
as Lake Erie was fifty years ago, in relation to modern means of
transportation and communication. People say, "Do we want to give up
our traditional isolation?" They are too late in asking the question:
that isolation is irrecoverably gone. That should be now evident even
to people dwelling in fatuously fancied security between the Alleghenies
and the Rockies. We are inevitably drawn into relation with the rest of
mankind. The question is no longer, "Shall we take a part in world
problems?", but "What part shall we take?"

The point is, that if, under the circumstances cited, any one wished to
do so, we could quickly be driven to such a condition of abject
humiliation that we should be compelled to fight. Now suppose,
disarmed, we should enter the conflict utterly unprepared? The result
would be, hundreds of thousands of young men, going out bravely in
obedience to an ideal--untrained and half equipped--to be butchered, a
humiliating peace, and an indemnity of many billions to be groaned under
for fifty years.

On the other hand, if we were adequately armed for defense, there would
be much less temptation to any one to trouble us; and if we were
compelled to fight, would it not be better to fight reasonably prepared?

There is a story, going the rounds of the press, about the bandit, Jesse
James: telling how, on one occasion, he went to a lonely farm house to
commandeer a meal. Entering, he found one woman, a widow, alone and
weeping bitterly. He asked her what was the matter, and she replied
that, in one hour, the landlord was coming, and if she did not have her
mortgage money, she would lose her little farm and home and be out in