Page:Jay William Hudson - America's International Ideals (1915).djvu/10

 public opinion. But such neutrality with regard to countries does not at all involve a passive neutrality with regard to great principles of social welfare, which are being imperilled not by any one nation in particular, but by the very existence of the European conflict, especially as viewed in terms of its historic causes and possible results.

For ages the race has been struggling toward what we somewhat vaguely call civilization. This struggle has meant the gradual realization of certain fundamental desires and needs of the human spirit, the attainment of which was always thought of as involving a social order in which the individual would be given larger and larger opportunities for the achievement of those ideals which alone give value to his life. For the realization of this social order, not only the great leaders of men, but the masses have thought and toiled and sacrificed and died ever since man began to lift himself above the blind instincts of the brute. Nor has this ideal social order been merely an undefined dream. Gradually, as mankind has grown more self-conscious, it has gained definiteness, until it has been seen to involve the supremacy of certain principles without which any permanent civilization is impossible. The race learns by long and arduous experience: and the emerging of these principles themselves into the mere thoughts of what might some day be is a long and fascinating story, for which we have no time here. The great truth to be made apparent is this: these indispensable principles of human welfare have nowhere been more speedily or more fully realized than in the social and political institutions of the American people.

Now, if this is so, America has a unique responsibility