"What, you ask me, should be the role of peace-loving America? When a gunman shoots up your home town, what do you de? Do you put up your shutters and simply pray that the outlaw Woes not attack you next? No. Your pacifism is more constructive. You do not want to break the peace yourself, [but if a gunman shoots your neigl hour, you organize a posse and go after him. For you know that to-day At is your neighbour, to-morrow it may be you.
"Let me recall to you a little bit of history. There were once nations so great and mighty as to be held above any danger of being attacked. When a neighbouring country was invaded in violation of all treaties "When I talked of the danger that confronts America if Japan succeeds in conquering China, you may think I am talking of the distant future. But it is the immediate present too that I have in mind.
"Like China you too were a child at play, piling block after block of your dream house when along came the little bully and destroyed your creation also. Here you are trying to lift yourselves out of the economic depression, creating new organizations, making laws, experimenting and ceaselessly striving to improve your situation. You have made substantial progress, your success is in sight, your people are better fed, better housed, and better clothed "when along comes the bully, Japan, and by raising the spectre of a world war threatens to tumble your house of recovery into disorder. Your tock markets have declined, the rices of your produce have gone dawn, you are even talking of seven-cent cotton and seventy-cent wheat, you are in danger of falling back into the depression by the fear of another world war. The vast internal market of your great country and the splendid isolation of ur shores have not given you immunity from the baneful effects of the Japanese war on China.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.