America and World Peace President Roosevelt's" fireside talk " to
perhaps a hundred million listeners on Tuesday evening dealt mainly with domestic questions, but its importance as a footnote to last week's Chicago speech on the international situation is great. Did the Chicago declaration on America's part in preserving peace mean anything, and if so how much ? That it definitely meant something is incontestable after this week's talk. How much, Mr. Roosevelt himself could hardly say ; that must depend still on how the country takes it. But it is of unquestioned significance that after speaking last week of " quarantine" for belligerent States the President should now remind his countrymen that internal prosperity depends on external peace and declare that peace cannot be just wished for or waited for, it "must be affirmatively reached for," and that America therefore " actively engages " in the search for peace. These, still, are words that need interpretation, 1?ut they manifestly show that the President is ready to go as far as the country and Congress will let him go in the direction of active co-operation with other nations striving to preserve world-peace, and that the education of the country and of Congress is well begun. The first step, moreover, is the prompt acceptance by the United States of the invitation to attend a Nine Power Conference on the Far East, a step which makes it singularly difficult for Italy, still nominally a member of the League of Nations, to demur to the invitation as coming from Geneva. The Prime Minister has already given a warm welcome to the President's words. In that he speaks for the whole country, * * * *
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