For instance, through our early history the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans were believed to be walls of safety for the United
States. Time and distance made it physically possible, for example,
for us and for the other American Republics to obtain and maintain
our independence against infinitely stronger powers. Until recently
very few people, even military experts, thought that the day would
ever come when we might have to defend our Pacific Coast against
Japanese threats of invasion.
At the outbreak of the first World War relatively few people
thought that our ships and shipping would be menaced by German
submarines on the high seas or that the German militarists would
ever attempt to dominate any nation outside of central Europe.
After the Armistice in 1918, we thought and hoped that the
militaristic philosophy of Germany had been crushed; and being full
of the milk of human kindness we spent the next twenty years
disarming, while the Germans whined so pathetically that the other
nations permitted them--and even helped them--to rearm.
For too many years we lived on pious hopes that aggressor and
warlike nations would learn and understand and carry out the
doctrine of purely voluntary peace.
The well-intentioned but ill-fated experiments of former years did
not work. It is my hope that we will not try them again.
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