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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: which says, "Germany is beaten. Let us forgive and forget." That is not
Christianity. There is nothing Christian about it. It is merely
sentimental slush, sloppy shirking of anything that compels national
alertness, or effort, or self-discipline, or self-denial; a moral
cowardice that pushes away any fact which disturbs a shallow, torpid,
irresponsible, self-indulgent optimism.
Our golden age of isolation is over. To attempt to return to it would be
a mere pernicious day-dream. To hark back to Washington's warning against
entangling alliances is as sensible as to go by a map of the world made
in 1796. We are coupled to the company of nations like a car in the
middle of a train, only more inevitably and permanently, for we cannot
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