The United States is not a forgotten Elysian island. Our two oceans connect us with the rest of the world; they do not separate us. They are carrying, at this moment, machine tools, automobiles, raw materials, and all manner of manufactured goods to the whole world and they are bringing here other materials, such as rubber, tungsten, and tin, that are absolutely essential to the continuance of production at even its present level. They protect us, still, from armed attack upon our soil, but they do not protect us from assaults upon our economy or upon the public mind. They in no way relieve us of the responsibility of doing everything that a great nation can do to maintain a world order in which the interests of its people, and the values that they cherish, can survive and improve.

– Dorothy Thompson, Let the Record Speak (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939), p. 9.