the American
financial representatives at Paris, should then turn to the United
States for funds to rehabilitate the victim in sufficient measure to
allow the spoliation to recommence in a year or two?

There is no answer to these objections as matters are now. If I had
influence at the United States Treasury, I would not lend a penny to a
single one of the present Governments of Europe. They are not to be
trusted with resources which they would devote to the furtherance of
policies in repugnance to which, in spite of the President's failure to
assert either the might or the ideals of the people of the United
States, the Republican and the Democratic parties are probably united.
But if, as we must pray they will, the souls of the European peoples
turn away this winter from the false idols which have survived the war
that created them, and substitute in their hearts for the hatred and the
nationalism, which now possess them, thoughts and hopes of the happiness
and solidarity of the European family,--then should natural piety and
filial love impel the American people to put on one side all the smaller
objections of private advantage and to complete the work, that they
began in saving Europe from the tyranny of organized force, by saving
her from herself. And even if the conversion is not fully accomplished,
and some parties only in each of the European countries have espoused a
policy of reconciliation, America can still point the way and hold up
the hands of the party of peace by having a plan and a condition on
which she will give her aid to the work of renewing life.

The impulse which, we are told, is now strong in the mind of the United
States to be quit of the turmoil, the complication, the violence, the
expense, and, above all, the unintelligibility of the European problems,
is easily understood. No one can feel more intensely than the writer
how natural it is to retort to the folly and impracticability of the
European statesmen,--Rot, then, in your own malice, and we will go our
way--

Remote from Europe; from her blasted hopes;
Her fields of carnage, and polluted air.

But if America recalls for a moment what Europe has meant to her and
still means to her, what Europe, the mother of art and of knowledge, in
spite of everything, still is and still will be, will she not reject
these counsels of indifference and isolation, and interest herself in
what may prove decisive issues for the progress and civi