s but as a sort of historical interlude. Past
interests were forgotten in the insistence upon the immediate. Until
the war broke in upon us we had been groping, both in foreign and
domestic policies, towards certain forms of national expression;
arbitration, international justice, democracy, social reform.
Throughout a century, we had believed that we had blundered towards
these goals, and that our history revealed an aspiration approaching
fulfilment. We had settled a continent, built an ordered society, and
amid a mass of self-created entanglements, were striving to erect a new
civilisation upon the basis of a changed economic life. Now it was
assumed that all this stubbornly contested progress was forever ended
by the conflict engulfing the world.

This whole idealistic phase of American life was disparaged by our
sudden ultra-patriots. These men, with a perhaps unconscious bias,
opposed their brand new martial idealism to what they falsely believed
was a purely {7} materialistic pacifism. Actually both advocates and
opponents of increased armaments were contending under the stress of a
new and bewildering emotion. For decades we had concerned ourselves
with our own affairs, undisturbed by events which convulsed Europe.
But the present war, because of its magnitude and nearness, had set our
nerves jangling, excited us morbidly, dulled us to horror and made us
oversensitive to dread. We read of slaughter, maiming, rape and
translated the facts of Belgium and Servia into imaginary atrocities
committed against ourselves. We wanted to be "doing something." Not
that we wished war, but rather the chance to rank high according to the
standards in vogue at the hour. While hating the war, we had
insensibly imbibed the mental quality of the men who were fighting. We
were tending to think as though all future history were to be one
continuing cataclysm.

For the moment, like the rest of the world, we were hypnotised. Upon
our minds a crude picture had been stamped. We were more conscious of
peril than before the war, though the peril was now less. Our
immediate danger from invasion was smaller than it had been in June,
1914; yet while we were perhaps foolishly unafraid in 1914, in 1916 we
trembled hypnotically.

It was to this state of the American mind that all sorts of appeals
were made. Those who wanted universal conscription and the greatest
navy in the world argued not only from dread of invaders but fro