une 29, 1914, when they read that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria had been assassinated. Nor, a month later, when it became obvious
that the resulting crisis was to precipitate another war in the Balkans,
did most Americans realize that the world was hovering on the brink of
momentous events. Not even when the most dire forebodings were realized
and the great powers of Europe were drawn into the quarrel, could America
appreciate its significance. Crowds gazed upon the bulletin boards and
tried to picture the steady advance of German field-gray through the
streets of Liege, asked their neighbors what were these French 75's, and
endeavored to locate Mons and Verdun on inadequate maps. Interest could
not be more intense, but it was the interest of the moving-picture
devotee. Even the romantic voyage of the _Kronprinzessin Cecilie_ with
her cargo of gold, seeking to elude the roving British cruisers, seemed
merely theatrical. It was a tremendous show and we were the spectators.
Only the closing of the Stock Exchange lent an air of reality to the
crisis.

It was true that the Spanish War had made of the United States a world
power, but so firmly rooted in American minds was the principle of
complete political isolation from European affairs that the typical
citizen could not imagine any cataclysm on the other side of the Atlantic
so engrossing as to engage the active participation of his country. The
whole course of American history had deepened the general feeling of
aloofness from Europe and heightened the effect of the advice given by
the first President when he warned the country to avoid entangling
alliances. In the early nineteenth century the United States was a
country apart, for in the days when there was neither steamship nor
telegraph the Atlantic in truth separated the New World from the Old.
After the close of the "second war of independence," in 1815, the
possibility of foreign complications seemed remote. The attention of the
young nation was directed to domestic concerns, to the building up of
manufactures, to the extension of the frontiers westward. The American
nation turned its back to the Atlantic. There was a steady and welcome
stream of immigrants from Europe, but there was little speculation or
interest as to its headwaters.

Governmental relations with European states were disturbed at times by
crises of greater or less importance. The proximity of the United States
to and interest in Cuba co