THE OUTLOOK FOR AMERICA IN THE EAST.
JUST now the nations of earth seem more ripe for a universal conflict than at any time since history began. The traditional policy of the United States against entangling alliances with the powers of the Old World is changing under the crushing pressure of that process which is hastening the culmination. America has quickly sprung into place as one of the powers mutually interested in the entangling questions that are absorbing the attention of the Old World. Her forces are reckoned with, her wishes debated, as they were not in former times. She has taken the lead in the delicate matter of seeking to restrict the area of operations in the present war in the Orient, actually leading the concert of world powers, bringing pressure to bear upon the two powers now in arms. So the question no longer is, How can America become involved with these striving powers in affairs which would seem to involve them alone? But rather, How long can she now abstain from actual participation in their disputes? The question of a coalition of European powers against America is being steadily agitated among certain of these powers, who fear that the continued increase of America's wealth and powers will soon constitute her a dangerous menace to theirs. Besides these things there is the fact of America's "colonial" interests in the far East, close to the present scene of hostilities, and still closer to the great empire on which European powers have long looked with covetous eyes. America has become one of the powers interested in the Orient. So much for the probabilities of America's entanglement in the sanguinary affairs of the Old World.