Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/421

 The Political and Social Reconstruction 401 PASSENGER AEROPLANE FLYING OVER NORTHOLT (Photo taken/roift aTwtlui ^plaite by the Central Aerophoto Co,) tribution to the vast problem of the time. It had none. The natural disposition of the American people was towards a permanent world peace. With this however was linked a strong traditional distrust of old world politics and a habit of isolation from old world entanglements. The Americans had hardly begun to think out an American solution of world problems when the submarine cam- paign of the Germans dragged them into the war on the side of the anti-German allies. President Wilson's scheme of a League of Nations was an attempt at short notice to create a distinctively American world project. It was a sketchy, inadequate and dangerous scheme. In Europe however it was taken as a matured American point of view. The generality of mankind in 1918—19 was intensely weary of war and anxious at almost any sacrifice to erect barriers against its recurrence, but there was not a single government in the old world willing to waive one iota of its sovereign independence to attain any such end. The public utterances of President Wilson leading up to the project 2 A