It is hard for an Englishman to understand how a very great nation, a very proud nation, whom we, accustomed to range the whole circuit of the world and find our brothers trading or governing in the antipodes, look upon instinctively as our own kinsmen and natural friends, should be content to stay apart from the great movement of the world, and to strike no blow either for Democracy or Absolutism; to leave it to others to decide whether peace or war shall be the main regulator of national life, whether treaties shall be sacred or not, whether or not "Government of the people by the people for the people" shall perish from the greater part of the earth. And many Americans feel as we do. The most brilliant and magnetic of America's recent Presidents feels as we do. But, as a rule, I believe, the average American is not only content, but proud to stand thus aloof and indifferent. The line of thought leading to such a pride is one familiar to many generations of Americans, the glory of their immense isolation. Why should they turn back to mix again in the misery and blood-guiltiness of that evil old world from which their fathers and mothers fled? They will forgive it, now that they are free and safe. They will forgive it; they will revisit it sometimes with a kind of affection; they will pour out their abundant riches to alleviate its sufferings, but they will never again be entangled in its schemes and policies, they will never again give it power over them. Generation after generation of American settlers have been refugees from European persecution. Refugee Puritans, refugee Quakers, refugee Catholics, French Huguenots, English and German Republicans, in later days persecuted Jews and Poles and Russian revolutionaries have all found shelter and freedom in America, and most of them some degree of prosperity and public respect. And far more numerous than these definite sufferers from religious or political persecution have been the swarms of settlers who, for one reason or another, had found life too hard in the Old World. In every generation the effect is repeated. Europe is the place that people fly from; the place of tyrants and aristocracies, of wars and crooked diplomacy, the place where the poor are so miserable that they leave their homes and families and spend their last shilling in order to work at the lowest manual labour in the one land on earth which will really assure them "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." No wonder it is easy for an American to reject all responsibility for the troubles of Europe!