In the months leading up to World War II, there was a tendency among many Americans to talk absently about the trouble in Europe. Nothing that happened an ocean away seemed very threatening.

Tierney’s remark reflects the isolationist mood that shaped much U.S. public opinion in the late 1930s: Europe’s crises could be discussed as distant “trouble,” abstracted by geography and by a belief that the Atlantic provided insulation. The quote underscores how normalcy and routine can dull a society’s perception of looming danger, especially when threats appear remote and indirect. Read as retrospective testimony, it also hints at the shock of Pearl Harbor and the rapid collapse of that sense of safety—how quickly “an ocean away” ceased to be a meaningful boundary once global war and modern technology made distance irrelevant.