Absorbed for three years in the grim business of global war, the American people only dimly understand what is involved in their apparent willingness to participate in the equally exacting business of organizing the world for enduring peace. If this participation is to be sustained and effective instead of short-lived or sporadic, the scope and forms of the future foreign policy of the United States cannot help being profoundly affected. Its context will be radically different from that of prewar times.

This observation does not imply any sharp departure from the fundamental postulates of policy enunciated year in and year out by Secretary Hull since 1933. The foreign policy of every great power is always more or less a continuum, compounded of old and new elements. Between wars we at least paid lip service to the ideal of a world organized for peace and security, though we persistently declined to assume the obligations of full membership in the League of Nations. We have for decades sponsored the development of a loose collaborative system designed to further Pan-American solidarity. At the world level, moreover, we have been an active participant in international agencies concerned with technical, scientific, social, and humanitarian matters, including, since 1934, the International Labor Organization. And in 1928 we joined with sixty-two other signatories of the Pact of Paris in renouncing “war as an instrument of national policy.”