This can only be achieved by some such world league of peace as that which I advocate. Most important of all, it can only be achieved by the willingness and ability of great, free powers to put might back of right, to make their protest against wrong-doing effective by, if necessary, punishing the wrong-doer. It is this fact which makes the clamor of the pacificists for “peace, peace,” without any regard to righteousness, so abhorrent to all right-thinking people. There are multitudes of professional pacificists in the United States, and of well-meaning but ill-informed persons who sympathize with them from ignorance. There are not a few astute persons, bankers of foreign birth, and others, who wish to take sinister advantage of the folly of these persons, in the interest of Germany. All of these men clamor for immediate peace. They wish the United States to take action for immediate peace or for a truce, under conditions designed to leave Belgium with her wrongs unredressed and in the possession of Germany. They strive to bring about a peace which would contain within itself the elements of frightful future disaster, by making no effective provision to prevent the repetition of such wrong-doing as has been inflicted upon Belgium. All of the men advocating such action, including the professional pacificists, the big business men largely of foreign birth, and the well-meaning but feeble-minded creatures among their allies, and including especially all those who from sheer timidity or weakness shrink from duty, occupy a thoroughly base and improper position. The peace advocates of this stamp stand on an exact par with men who, if there was an epidemic of lawlessness in New York, should come together to demand the immediate cessation of all activity by the police, and should propose to substitute for it a request that the highwaymen, white slavers, black-handers, and burglars cease their activities for the moment on condition of retaining undisturbed possession of the ill-gotten spoils they had already acquired. The only effective friend of peace in a big city is the man who makes the police force thoroughly efficient, who tries to remove the causes of crime, but who unhesitatingly insists upon the punishment of criminals. Pacificists who believe that all use of force in international matters can be abolished will do well to remember that the only efficient police forces are those whose members are scrupulously careful not to commit acts of violence when it is possible to avoid them, but who are willing and able, when the occasion arises, to subdue the worst kind of wrong-doers by means of the only argument that wrong-doers respect, namely, successful force. What is thus true in private life is similarly true in international affairs.