Over the years it has been an often heated and debated issue on whether the United States could have entered the war sooner and thus have saved many lives. To try to understand this we must look both at the people and government's point of view.

Just after war broke out in Europe, President Roosevelt hurriedly called his cabinet and military advisors together. There it was agreed that the United States stay neutral in these affairs. One of the reasons given was that unless America was directly threatened they had no reason to be involved. This reason was a valid one because it was the American policy to stay neutral in any affairs not having to do with them unless American soil was threatened directly. Thus the provisional neutrality act

Why risk going to war, when it is contrary to American policy which most if not all Americans were in agreement with and not mentioning the fact that the American military was in shambles. Yet another factor that led to this decision of Neutrality by President Roosevelt was the American Economy.

The desire to avoid "foreign entanglements" of all kinds had been an American foreign policy for more than a century. A very real "geographical Isolation" permitted the United States to "fill up the empty lands of North America free from the threat of foreign conflict"(Hart 391).

Another aspect that we have to consider is the people's views and thought's regarding the United States going to war. After all let us not forget that the American government is there "for the people and by the people" and therefore the people's view did play a major role in this declaration of Neutrality. In one of Roosevelt's fireside chats he said "We shun political commitments which might entangle us In foreign wars...If we face the choice of profits or peace-this nation must answer, the nation will answer 'we choose peace' ", in which they did. A poll taken in 1939 revealed that ninety-four percent of the citizens did not want the United States to enter the war. The shock of World War I had still not left, and entering a new war, they felt, would be foolish. In the early stages of the war American Ambassador to London was quoted saying "It's the end of the world, the end of everything" (Fuller 261). As Buchanan notes in The Road To War, this growing "estrangement" from Europe was not mere selfishness. They were the values expressed by secretary of state, Cordel Hull: "a primary interest in peace with justice, in economic well-being with stability, and conditions of order under the law". These were principles here on which most Americans (ninety-four percent as of 1939) agreed on. To promote these principles the United States would have to avoid all "foreign entanglements", or as Buchanan puts it "any kind of alliance or association outside the western hemisphere". Instead the United States should act as an arbiter in world affairs, "encouraging peaceful change where necessary" and most and for all discouraging aggression (Buchanan 263).

Franklin Delano Roosevelt did think about the security of the republic and defended it magnificently. Leading the United States every

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Approximate Word count = 1619
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)