Page:Jay William Hudson - America's International Ideals (1915).djvu/37

 age it is not a question whether nations want to co-operate or not. Economic conditions alone have become so complexly interrelated that nations will more and more be forced, in self-defense, to understand each other and work with each other for common international interests, rather than to destroy those interests through a mutual attempt at annihilation. This is the great lesson of the European war, and there is absolutely no doubt that Europe will be compelled for the sake of its very life to read that lesson in such a way that she will henceforth see the utter futility of adopting barbaric methods for the solving of civilized questions in an age which has entirely reorganized the financial and cultural relations between peoples. The facts of this financial and cultural interrelation were in existence before the war began: but it was necessary that the peoples of the world have a thorough consciousness of these facts before the facts themselves could count efficiently in the achievement of a new international situation. This consciousness is growing every day. America can help it to become a conviction by her own international policy. She is at the parting of the ways. America can follow Europe and adopt an international outlook now fast becoming obsolete even with Europe herself: or America can help to lead Europe to a new internationalism and a new world order, based upon the new and unquestioned facts of the new international life that has arisen during the last half-century, together with its new international obligations and ideals. Either America will adopt the European way, or Europe will adopt the American way. Which shall it be? More than we realize, it depends upon America s own far-sightedness.