Since the early st days of the American Republic the foreign policy of the United States has been based upon a series of fictions, which like the axioms of Euclidean mathematics, had at least the merit of being workable hypotheses even if they were not absolutely true. The first of these was that the New World was not a mere phrase, but represented a real condition; that there was a New World (as opposed to an Old World) in which the United States could play a role remote from the traditional conflicts and struggles which bedevilled Europe. In recent references to this conception the New World has been praised as the repository of democratic principles, and as the haven of peace. It has also been assumed that the interests of individual members of the New World in each other were greater than their interests in Europe.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.