Excerpt from Harper's Encyclopaedia of United States History From 458 A D. To 1909, Based Upon the Plan of Benson John Lossing, Vol. 1 of 10

The American people wisely attach great importance to Washington's Farewell Address. And give deserved weight to his counsels. Not one of those counsels has been more influential and more safe'guardo ing than his admonition to his country men to avoid entangling alliances with European nations. Yet Americans must not forget that changes wrought by human progress make inapplicable in one century advice which was wise in the preceding century: that if there be peril to a nation in recklessly advancing along strange paths to an unknown future, there is also danger to a nation in fastening itself too firmly to its past traditions, and refusing to itself permission to recognize changes of conditions which necessitate changes of policy. It is because Spain adheres to the traditions of the sixteenth century. And England has from time to time departed from those traditions. Using them as a guide towards the future, not as a prohibi tion to progress. That Spain has sunk from a first-class to a fourth-class power. While England still remains a leader among the nations of the world.

When Washington issued his Farewell Address. The United States was a feeblenation, composed of thirteen colonies, just emancipated from foreign domination. It took as many weeks to go from the north ern to the southern border of this nation as it now takes days. The States had not yet been welded into a united nation, and were separated from one another not only by time and distance, but by jealousy and rivalry. The union of the States had not passed beyond the experimental stage. The Constitution of the United States was still on trial. All west of the Alleghanies was an untrodden, and for the most part un known, wilderness. The population, even along the seaboard, was scanty; the cities were few and small; there was no com merce and little manufactures. In 1809 Jefferson presented to the country his ideal on the subject of manufactures and commerce: Manufactures sufficient for our consumption, of what we raise the raw material and no more); commerce suffi cient to carry the surplus produce of agri culture beyond our own consumption, to a market for exchanging it for articles we cannot raise (and no A vast and little-known and little-travelled ocean separated us from Europe. Under these circumstances to engage in European strifes. To aid France against Great Brit sin. To concern ourselves with the balance of power, to undertake, directly or indi rectly, to promote the battles of democracy in the old world. To assume to judge that our as yet improved institutions were the best for countries other than our own, and to rush into the hazard of a foreign war by the unrestrained expression of our sym pathics with democratic uprisings would have been foolish indeed. These were the entangling alliances against which Wash ington admonished his countrymen, and we may say that his admonition against such entangling alliances it were well for us to heed, if necessity should arise, even now.

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