To attempt to return to it would be a mere pernicious day-dream.

To hark back to Washington's warning against entangling alliances is as sensible as to go by a map of the world made in 1796.

We are coupled to the company of nations like a car in the middle of a train, only more inevitably and permanently, for we cannot uncouple; and if we tried to do so, we might not wreck the train, but we should assuredly wreck ourselves.

I think the war has brought us one benefit certainly: that many young men return from Europe knowing this, who had no idea of it before they went, and who know also that Germany is at heart an untamed, unchanged wild beast, never to be trusted again.

We must not, and shall not, boycott her in trade; but let us not go to sleep at the switch! Just as busily as she is baking pottery opposite Coblenz, labelled "made in St.Louis," "made in Kansas City," her "army of spies" is at work here and everywhere to undermine those nations who have for the moment delayed her plans for world dominion.