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Show low it, arises from provincial egotism and ignorance. During the past 15 years billions of dollars in European industrial and publfct securities have been loaded on Americans. Our supposedly far-sighted far-sighted international financiers have collected their toll on this distribution distribu-tion but they seem to have had no thought of the patent fact that they were leading American investors into precarious enterprises America was powerless to regulate or protect. We begin to see the consequences of this criminal folly. The impossibilty of the European situation is and has been that Europe is trying to sustain some 40 nationalities, nation-alities, some of them petty war-nests, war-nests, and grouped into several hostile hos-tile combinations. This is a war .system .sys-tem of political organizations, as compared with the peace-system of American union of 48 states, many of them greater in population and wealth than some of these small European Eu-ropean nations with strong ambitions for more territory, wealth and population. popu-lation. The remedy for "the European mess" is union, not that greater divisipn which created 12 new nations, na-tions, 12 new sources of conflict, at the end of the World War. And union seems to be the last thing Europe Eu-rope is thinking of. Even Germany's proposal of commercial union with Austria is bitterly opposed, although Germany invited other European nations na-tions into the same customs compact. com-pact. Those who have opposed increasing in-creasing integration of the ' United States with warring and near bankrupt bank-rupt Europe have been denounced as isolationists, as "provincials," as lacking in that "broad" viewpoint which could comprehend the alleged advantages! of imperiling ourselves to save others who refuse to adopt the means essential to their own salvation. sal-vation. Time is vindicating the judgment judg-ment of those who have opposed the scheme of making America take pot-luck pot-luck with all the rest of the world. But the success of the scheme .o make the United States a perennial good thing for Europe, and more for the international pawn brokers who have been enriching themselves a the expense of their country, has proved to be a failure even for the financial internationalists who have kept the propaganda going: for they seem to be experiencing a day of eckoning. Of course our dreamy-eyed theoretical theor-etical internationalists, who pride themselves on having substituted "vision" for eyesight, will blame present European complications on the United States. If we had only loaned more money, if ve had only entered the League of Nations, if we had only further sacrificed ourselves our-selves for the profit of the European war machine and the international bankers, causes would not have had their inevitable effects in Europe. One conviction possesses these home-gro.wn home-gro.wn auslanders, and that is that their country is always wrong. WE ARE SHARING IN" "THE EUROPEAN MESS." (By George) B. Lockwood). If America should wash her hands of every European obligation, public and private, and start over again with a determination to hereafter keep entirely out of what Premier MacDonald fitly called "the European Euro-pean mess," we might be better off. The United States is strong enough to carry this nation's own load, but contrary to the impression which has been spread abroad by financiers, politicians, and so-cilled idealistic internationalists, we are not stout enough to carry the whole world on our backs. Beginning with our implication in the European financial situation when the World War started, tremendous pressure has been successfully brought to integrate the American economic situation with that of Europe. Eu-rope. At the same time the ideology of European political philosophy has been preached in this country by agitators, agi-tators, both alien and domestic, who have no comprehension of what America Am-erica is all about. We have already paid heavily for this involvement. During the eight years ending in 1912, our national wealth increased 72 per cent in dollars dol-lars of equal value. It was not made off the rest of the world; it was accumulated ac-cumulated by American labor and enterprise en-terprise in the development .of our own resources. At no time have we had in our dealings with foreign nations na-tions a balance of trade taking into account with the invisible items, except ex-cept during the World War, when we extended credit for vast sums which have not been and probably never will be paid. And from 1912 to 1922 10 years our national wealth increased in dollars of equal value only 1G per cent, while population had increased' 15 per cent and we had accumulated ac-cumulated future obligations much more than off-setting this. We lost i in the World War more than half of i the national wealth we would nor- mally have had in 1922, except th-vt we unavoidably got dragged into a war growing out of the clashing ambitions am-bitions of the various patches on Europe's Eu-rope's geographical crazy-quilt. The United States exercises no control over the political and economic eco-nomic policies of foreign nations, and cannot do so. Therefore, when we thrust ourselves into the European hegemony we accept responsibility and consequences without having the authority to determine the course of events. It has been proposed, of course, that we involve : 'ourselves n a European League of Nations in which we would cast one vote out of more than 50. So small a tail could not wag so big a dog. The supposition supposi-tion that European nations admit our "moral" leadership and want to fol-, |