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The Trail of a Tradition

PART I

France Indispensably Aids American Independence

France Indispensably Aids American
Independence

OUR tradition of intelligent and discriminating Nationalism-the doctrine of self-determining freedom from dangerous and avoidable foreign involvements-takes specific inception in America's official decision in 1793 to stand aloof from the Franco-British war and its far-flung involvements. But the trail of this tradition necessarily threads its tell-tale way back through that prior inchoate era when France played a major rôle in competitive North American explorations, in belligerent European rivalries for New World power, and in America's precarious achievement of its own epochal independence.

If in 1793 there were particular and emphatic reasons, born of this prior historical circumstance, which urged the young Republic into French partnership reasons which, in stressful intimacy, never subsequently could be duplicated in contact with any other foreign power-it becomes primarily important to search them out. Then if, in spite of such a paramount challenge, it was the deliberate decision of the Founders of the

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