“When one considers the obstacles to American entrance into the war, the more remarkable and unprecedented does the final decision become.  Every other belligerent had something immediate and tangible to gain by participating and to lose by not participating.  Either they were invaded or were threatened with invasion.  Either they dreaded the loss of prestige or territory or coveted some kind or degree of national aggrandisement.  Even Australia and Canada, who had little or nothing to gain from fighting, could not have refused to fight without severing their connection with the British Empire, and behaving in a manner which would have been considered treacherous by their fellow Britons.  But the American people were not forced into the war either by fears or hopes or previously recognised obligations.  On the contrary, the ponderable and tangible realities of the immediate situation counselled neutrality.  They were revolted by the hideous brutality of the war and its colossal waste.  Participation must be purchased with a similarly colossal diversion of American energy from constructive to destructive work, the imposition of a similarly heavy burden upon the future production of American labour.  It implied the voluntary surrender of many of those advantages which had tempted our ancestors to cross the Atlantic and settle in the New World.  As against these certain costs there were no equally tangible compensations.  The legal rights of American citizens were, it is true, being violated, and the structure of international law with which American security was traditionally associated was being shivered, but the nation had weathered a similar storm during the Napoleonic Wars and at that time participation in the conflict had been wholly unprofitable.  By spending a small portion of the money which will have to be spent in helping the Allies to beat Germany, upon preparations exclusively for defence, the American nation could have protected for the time being the inviolability of its own territory and its necessary communications with the Panama Canal.  Many considerations of national egotism counselled such a policy.  But although the Hearst newspapers argued most persuasively on behalf of this course it did not prevail.  The American nation allowed itself to be captured by those upon whom the more remote and less tangible reasons for participation acted with compelling authority.  For the first time in history a wholly independent nation has entered a great and costly war under the influence of ideas rather than immediate interests and without any expectation of gains, except those which can be shared with all liberal and inoffensive nations.