unsafe of course to judge a country and its people by what one sees and hears on a train journey. But that trip across the country continent has given me a better understanding of the hard core of isolationism that is so influential in American thinking. I also think I can see some of the reasons for it. That could one expect of inland tribes, living in a vast monotony of flat lands, with not a hill or a tree to which to lift their eyes from the soil? Surroundings like that, and a life devoted to cattle and corn, must surely have a deep effect on the development of the individual and tribal mind. The very safety in which those people have lived for generations has been bad for them. It would be better for them if enemies sometimes came raiding out of the vague distance which is their horizon. The only other tribes they know and come in contact with are friendly people, whose land will not produce all the food they must have to eat, and who, instead of taking these things by force, are willing to trade cloth and trinkets and strong liquor for them. They have lived and prospered without having to bother much about what went on in the outside world, so why be concerned about it now? Is it surprising that their big chiefs, their Tafts and Vandenburgs, carry such thoughts to pow-wows in the place called Washington? [illegible]