Americans should disabuse themselves finally of the idea that if England desires an alliance with the United States it is because she has any fear that she may need help against any other enemy. Englishmen are too well satisfied with themselves for that (with precisely the same kind of self-satisfaction as the United States suffers from), and much too confident that, in whatever may arise, it will be the other fellow who will need help. But if England has no misgiving as to her ability to take care of herself when trouble comes, she is far from being ashamed to say that she would infinitely prefer that trouble should not come, either to her or to another, and she would join--oh, so gladly!--with the United States (as for a partial attainment of the same end she has already joined with France on the one hand and with Japan on the other) to make sure that it should never come. Has the United States any right to refuse to enter into such an alliance--an alliance which would not be entangling, but which would make entanglements impossible? At Christmas time in 1906, the following suggestion was made in the London correspondence of an American paper[15:1]: "The new ideals which mankind has set before itself, the infinitely larger enlightenment and education of the masses, the desperate struggle which every civilised people is waging against all forms of social suffering and vice within itself, the mere complexity of modern commerce with its all-absorbing interest--these things all cry aloud for peace. War does not belong to this phase of civilisation. Least of all can it have any appeal to the two peoples in whom the spirit of the Twentieth Century is most manifest. Of all peoples, Great Britain and the United States have most cause to desire peace. "There should be a Christmas message sent from the White House which should run something like this: "TO HIS MAJESTY KING EDWARD THE SEVENTH: "To your majesty, to her majesty the Queen, and to the people of the British empire, I desire to express the best wishes of myself and of the people of the United States. At the same time, I wish to assure your majesty that you will have both the sympathy and the practical support of the American people in such action as it may seem right to you and to the British people to take in the direction of securing to the nations of the world that peace of which your majesty has always shown yourself so earnest an advocate. "(Signed), THEODORE ROOSEVELT. "Some such an answer as this would be returned: "TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: