Excerpt from A History of the Great War Finally, and most important of all reasons, the international policy of the United States was one of isolation from European political ain bitions. The Englishman understood that his country was allied with France and Russia. He naturally experienced at least slight curiosity to understand the reasons for such alliance and its implications. He wanted to know also the problems and Circumstances of both his country's allies and its rivals - Germany, austria-hungary and Italy. The German understood that his country was allied with Austria Hungary, Italy and Turkey. He naturally experienced at least slight curiosity to understand the reasons for such alliance and its implica tions. He wanted to know also the problems and circumstances of both his country's allies and its rivals - Great Britain, France and Russia. But the citizen of the United States was ever confident that the political alliances of Europe could not touch his welfare. His country's colonial possessions were neither important nor calculated to arouse strong national pride; his land was almost entirely self-de pendent; and the Monroe Doctrine was a stout bulwark between the Old World and the New. The intelligent European recognized that any day a quarrel between two insignificant nations of the Balkans might send him to the battle-front within two weeks; in the United States, the future chairman of the Committee on Public Information was by no means alone in believing that the Ukraine was a musical instrument. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.