America is of course concerned in the present war whether she will or no. She may, by her material resources in supplies, ammunition, credit, be largely influencing its decision. As part of the problem of protecting her own rights, incidentally menaced by the operations of the war, she has taken very solemnly a certain position in international affairs. She has declared, for instance, that she stands irrevocably for the protection of innocent non-combatant life at sea in war time. She would undoubtedly stand as decisively for certain lesser rights of trade and free communication on the seas as well (in the past she has gone to war in their defense) but for the fact that doing so against one belligerent would aid the cause of the other guilty of still greater offenses. And if we look beneath diplomatically expressed claims into unofficial, but unmistakably expressed public opinion, we find America standing strongly for certain other rules of life between nations—the right of each nation to national existence for instance—like those violated in the invasion of Belgium. Is America really serious in the stand thus made? Or is she going to avow by her future policy, if not in words, that she will take no real risk nor assume any real obligation in support of the principles she has been maintaining diplomatically and by her clearly expressed public opinion. Is she going to submit lamely, to the indignities and violation of right involved in the massacre of her innocent non-combatant citizens at sea? I put the question in that form because it is generally a rhetorical prelude to the demand for warlike action. And yet the American who is moved by his country’s dignity and right to have thought this thing out, as well as to have become angry about it, knows that warlike action is perhaps the very last thing—though it may be the last thing—which the situation calls for; and that warlike action alone would be a betrayal of his country’s highest interests in the matter. If America is really serious she must prepare herself—in public opinion, in political education—for action of a different kind: for the abandonment of certain traditions about freedom from entangling alliances, for the assumption of risks and obligations which to most Americans is to ask a great deal more than the mere act of going to war. Why will war of itself not suffice?