THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON FOREWORD THE people of the United States are faced today by a crisis more momentous than any that has gone before, for it is not America only that quivers in suspension, but the whole of that thing we know as civilization. It is a world that is molten-not the world of Macedon or Romebut a twentieth-century world in which there are no longer the safeties of space, the decent reserve of barriers, its unhappy peoples thrown into confused collision by a shock that has crumpled in all four corners. And by the whirl of chance, or maybe in obedience to some inexorable law working behind the great screen, the task of molding is in the hands of no ancient state, confident in inherited tradition, but waits. the experimental touch of a nation scarce one hundred and forty-four years old. The responsibilities of the United States are not a matter of speculation. Our material contributions, great and decisive as they were, stand dwarfed by the power and the glory that flowed from the declaration of American aims. It was |