It is otherwise with a dynastic State, to the directorate of which all other interests are necessarily secondary, subsidiary, and mainly to be considered only in so far as they are contributory to the nation's readiness for warlike enterprise.
America at the same time is placed in an extra-hazardous position, between the two seas beyond which to either side lie the two Imperial Powers whose place in the modern economy of nations it is to disturb the peace in an insatiable quest of dominion.

This position is no longer defensible in isolation, under the later state of the industrial arts, and the policy of isolation that has guided the national policy hitherto is therefore falling out of date.

The question is as to the manner of its renunciation, rather than the fact of it.

It may end in a defensive copartnership with other nations who are placed on the defensive by the same threatening situation, or it may end in a bootless struggle for independence, but the choice scarcely extends beyond this alternative.
It will be said, of course, that America is competent to take care of itself and its Monroe doctrine in the future as in the past.

But that view, spoken for cogently by thoughtful men and by politicians looking for party advantage, overlooks the fact that the modern technology has definitively thrown the advantage to the offensive, and that intervening seas can no longer be counted on as a decisive obstacle.