Against This Torrent

PROFESSOR EARLE is a spokesman for the thesis, especially popular in academic circles, that American intervention in the last European war was justified in terms of American national interests and that similar intervention is equally or more necessary in the present struggle against Hitler. He cites excerpts from the speeches of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and other early American statesmen to prove that the importance of the balance of power in Europe for American security was not overlooked even in those days. It is perhaps significant of the changed American national psychology that he tries to give interventionism a defensive rather than a crusading flavor. It is not to make the world safe for democracy but to preserve our own way of life that we should, in Professor Earle’s opinion, ‘use our economic power, our diplomatic resources, our moral influence, and, if necessary, our naval and military establishments to assure the defeat of Germany.’ W.H.C.