d war as a
biological or sociological necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary
psychological checks and motives. When the time of development is ripe
the war must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications pleaded
are invariably fictitious. War is, in short, a permanent human
_obligation_. General Homer Lea, in his recent book "The Valor of
Ignorance," plants himself squarely on this ground. Readiness for war
is for him the essence of nationality, and ability in it the supreme
measure of the health of nations.

Nations, General Lea says, are never stationary--they must necessarily
expand or shrink, according to their vitality or decrepitude. Japan
now is culminating; and by the fatal law in question it is impossible
that her statesmen should not long since have entered, with
extraordinary foresight, upon a vast policy of conquest--the game in
which the first moves were her wars with China and Russia and her
treaty with England, and of which the final objective is the capture of
the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, and the whole of our
Coast west of the Sierra Passes. This will give Japan what her
ineluctable vocation as a state absolutely forces her to claim, the
possession of the entire Pacific Ocean; and to oppose these deep
designs we Americans have, according to our author, nothing but our
conceit, our ignorance, our commercialism, our corruption, and our
feminism. General Lea makes a minute technical comparison of the
military strength which we at present could oppose to the strength of
Japan, and concludes that the islands, Alaska, Oregon, and Southern
California, would fall almost without resistance, that San Francisco
must surrender in a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three
or four months the war would be over, and our republic, unable to
regain what it had heedlessly neglected to protect sufficiently, would
then "disintegrate," until perhaps some Caesar should arise to weld us
again into a nation.

A dismal forecast indeed! Yet not implausible, if the mentality of
Japan's statesmen be of the Caesarian type of which history shows so
many examples, and which is all that General Lea seems able to imagine.
But there is no reason to think that women can no longer be the mothers
of Napoleonic or Alexandrian characters; and if these come in Japan and
find their opportunity, just such surprises as "The Valor of Ignorance"
paints may lurk in ambush for us. Ignorant as we still are of