ganize or join these
peace-at-any-price leagues are engaged, according to their feeble
abilities, in cultivating a standard of manhood which, if logically
applied, would make them desire to "arbitrate" with any tough
individual who slapped the sister or sweetheart of one of them in the
face.

Well-meaning people, as we all know, sometimes advocate a course of
action which is infamous; and, as was proved by the great Copperhead
Party fifty years ago, there are always some brave men to be found
condoning or advocating deeds of national cowardice. But the fact
remains that the advocates of pacifism who have been most prominent in
our country during the past five years have been preaching
poltroonery.

Such preaching, if persevered in long enough, softens the fibre of any
nation, and, above all, of those preaching it; and if it is reduced to
practice it is ruinous to national character. These men have been
doing their best to make us the China of the Occident, and the college
students, such as those of whom you speak, have already reached a
level considerably below that to which the higher type of Chinaman has
now struggled on his upward path.

On the whole, for the nation as for the individual, the most
contemptible of all sins is the sin of cowardice; and while there are
other sins as base there are none baser. The prime duty for this
nation is to prepare itself so that it can protect itself--and this
is the duty that you are preaching in your admirable volume. It is
only when this duty has been accomplished that we shall be able to
perform the further duty of helping the cause of the world
righteousness by backing the cause of the international peace of
justice (the only kind of peace worth having) not merely by words but
by deeds.

A peace conference such as that which some of our countrymen propose
at the moment to hold is purely noxious, until as a preliminary we put
ourselves in such shape that what we say will excite the respect and
not the derision of foreign nations; and, furthermore, until we have
by practical action shown that we are heartily ashamed of ourselves
for our craven abandonment of duty in not daring to say a word when
The Hague Conventions were ruthlessly violated before our eyes.

Righteousness must be put before peace, and peace must be recognized
as of value only when it is the hand-maiden of justice. The doctrine
of national or individual neutrality between right and wrong is an
ignoble d