=_Second._ Apparently a better remedy: a policy of isolation carried
out by building ships for coast defense only, by girding our seacoast
and our international borders with a broad gauge national railway,
capable of carrying the heaviest ordnance and transporting strong
armies rapidly; by building emplacements, magazines and trenches, and
manufacturing and storing at strategic points heavy artillery, small
arms, ammunition and equipment for at least two million men; forming
a regular army of several hundred thousand men with pay equal to, or
even greater, than that of other government employees, to serve but
one short enlistment. When thoroughly trained and disciplined, they
would be returned to civil life subject to call in an emergency. This
in a few years would provide several million efficient soldiers. With
the present airplane scouts the approach of any foe could be detected
and announced so as to assemble an army either on the land or seashore
that would destroy any possible force that could approach us. America
is better situated for such isolation than any other quarter of the
globe that nature has given to a homogeneous people, because we
produce all the necessities of life. The rest of the world would be
obliged to make terms with us for the necessities they can not live
without, of which fact this war is a perfect exemplification.=
=_Third._ Certainly the most promising and feasible course, if
the tyranny of the world's custom can be overcome as it has been in
personal trial by combat, is to federate all the nations of the world
under a constitution similar to the constitution of the original
thirteen States, now the greatest nation in the world, and that of the
Swiss cantons, now the oldest fundamentally unchanged government in
the world.=
=This plan ought to be offered at the coming peace table with the
United States a controlling factor in its accomplishment. We will
be stronger, less impoverished, less distressed and less bitterly
antagonistic than any of the other warring nations, with a President
capable of leading his people, known to be in sympathy with control of
the world's peace.=
=A spontaneous call from the peace societies of America is suggested
for a convention of all the nations of the earth having a population
of three million or more, with a democratic or republican government
with powers derived from the consent of the governed, to consider a
confederacy of the world's nations, to which all should be invited to
enter by "knocking at the door," and subscribing to the constitution
then to be formed.=
=That the nations so confederated should take over all the seas,
the Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, those at Dover and Calais,
those between Japan and Korea and the Panama Canal, together with
adequate adjacent lands, and build tunnels thereunder and maintain
them free to the passage of persons and property of all nations save
those who may fail to confederate.=