Since the beginning of the present European conflict the American public have been advised to keep their emotions under control. ... To recommend coolness is not to recommend indifference. ... A cause to which we incline emotionally is not for that reason wrong any more than it is for that reason right. ... The country should be slow to anger and should judge the acts of foreign governments in the light of our own national interests. This does not mean that Americans count the preservation of liberty here and the survival of human liberties in other countries as of only trifling importance in a world largely given over to Machtpolitik. It would be a stupid foreign leader indeed who thought so.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Since the beginning of the present European conflict the American public have been advised to keep their emotions under control. ... To recommend coolness is not to recommend indifference. ... A cause to which we incline emotionally is not for that reason wrong any more than it is for that reason right. ... The country should be slow to anger and should judge the acts of foreign governments in the light of our own national interests. This does not mean that Americans count the preservation of liberty here and the survival of human liberties in other countries as of only trifling importance in a world largely given over to Machtpolitik. It would be a stupid foreign leader indeed who thought so." in the context of "Allen W. Dulles and Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Can America Stay Neutral? (1939)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.