that the influence of the whole shall
be thrown against the one recalcitrant member.

The immensely increased contact between nations which has set up a
greater independence (in the way hinted at in my last article) has given
weight to the interest in security and taken from the interest in
aggression. The tendency to aggression is often a blind impulse due to
the momentum of old ideas which have not yet had time to be discredited
and disintegrated by criticism. And of organization for the really
common interest--that of security against aggression--there has, in
fact, been none. If there is one thing certain it is that in Europe last
July the people did not want war; they tolerated it, passively dragged
by the momentum of old forces which they could not even formulate. The
really general desire has never been organized; any means of giving
effect to a common will--such as is given it in society within the
frontiers--has never so far been devised.

I believe that it is the mission of America in her own interest to
devise it; that the circumstances of her isolation, historical and
geographical, enable her to do for the older peoples--and herself--a
service which by reason of their circumstances, geographical and
historical, they cannot do for themselves.

The power that she exercises to this end need not be military. I do not
think that it should be military. This war has shown that the issues of
military conflict are so uncertain, depending upon all sorts of physical
accidents, that no man can possibly say which side will win. The present
war is showing daily that the advantage does not always go with numbers,
and the outcome of war is always to some extent a hazard and a gamble,
but there are certain forces that can be set in operation by nations
situated as the United States, that are not in any way a gamble and a
hazard, the effect of which will be quite certain.

I refer to the pressure of such a thing as organized non-intercourse,
the sending of a country to moral, social, economic Coventry. We are, I
know, here treading somewhat unknown ground, but we have ample evidence
to show that there do exist forces capable of organization, stronger,
and more certain in their operation than military forces. That the world
is instinctively feeling this is demonstrated by the present attitude of
all the combatants in Europe to the United States. The United States
relatively to powers like Russia, Britain, and Germany is not