Given an enfeebled Britain, there will probably be a collapse into conflict and discord throughout most of India; and China, unhelped, may continue in a state of confusion which is steadily destroying her ancient educated class and her ancient traditions without replacing them by any modernized educational organization. But here again upon the Western Pacific there may be regions which need not go the whole way down to citylessness, illiteracy and the peasant life. Japan is still solvent and energetic, the war has probably strained her very little more than it has strained America, and her participation in the world credit system is still so recent that, like America, she may be able to draw herself together and maintain herself and expand her rule and culture, unimpeded, over the whole of Eastern Asia. She will be the more able to do this if a phase of disarmament gives her time to rest and consolidate before her expansion is resumed. A war between Japan and America would be a long and costly affair and it would no doubt topple both powers into the same process of dissolution in which Europe now welters, but I am assuming that America takes no risk of such a war for the sake of China or suchlike remote cause and that Japan is not eager for California. An America indifferent to the fall of Europe would probably not trouble itself seriously if presently Australia came under Japanese domination. It would not trouble—until the Monroe Doctrine was invaded. And it would get along very comfortably and happily. So far as material considerations go, therefore, there is not much force in an appeal to the ordinary plain man in America to interest himself, much less to exert himself, in the tangled troubles of Europe and Asia now. He can remain as proudly “isolated” as his fathers; he can refuse help, he can “avoid entangling alliances,” and rely on his own strength; he can weather the smash, insist on pressing any sparks of recovery out of the European debtor, and so far as he and his children, and possibly even his children’s children, are concerned, America can expect to go on living an extremely tolerable life. There will still be plenty of Fords, plenty of food, movies and other amusing inventions; seed time, harvest and thanksgiving; no armament and very light taxation and as high a percentage of moral, well-regulated lives as any community has ever shown upon this planet. Until that long-distant time when the great Asiatic Empire of Japan turns its attention seriously to expansion in the New World. So far as present material considerations go....