As I have already said, I know of my own knowledge that two nations which on certain occasions were obliged, perhaps as much by our fault as by theirs, to take into account the question of possible war with the United States, planned in such event to seize the Panama Canal and to take and ransom or destroy certain of our great coast cities. They planned this partly in the belief that our navy would intermittently be allowed to become extremely inefficient, just as during the last twenty months it has become inefficient, and partly in the belief that our people are so wholly unmilitary, and so ridden to death on the one hand by foolish pacificists and on the other by brutal materialists whose only God is money, that we would not show ourselves either resolutely patriotic or efficient even in what belated action our utter lack of preparation permitted us to take. I believe that these nations were and are wrong in their estimate of the underlying strength of the American character. I believe that if war did really come both the ultrapacificists, the peace-at-any-price men, and the merely brutal materialists, who count all else as nothing compared to the gratification of their greed for gain or their taste for ease, for pleasure, and for vacuous excitement, would be driven before the gale of popular feeling as leaves are driven through the fall woods. But such aroused public feeling in the actual event would be wholly inadequate to make good our failure to prepare. We should in all humility imitate not a little of the spirit so much in evidence among the Germans and the Japanese, the two nations which in modern times have shown the most practical type of patriotism, the greatest devotion to the common weal, the greatest success in developing their economic resources and abilities from within, and the greatest far-sightedness in safeguarding the country against possible disaster from without. In the _Journal of the Military Service Institution_ for the months of November and December of the present year will be found a quotation from a Japanese military paper, _The Comrades’ Magazine_, which displays an amount of practical good sense together with patriotism and devotion to the welfare of the average man which could well be copied by our people and which is worthy of study by every intelligent American. Germany’s success in industrialism has been as extraordinary and noteworthy as her success in securing military efficiency, and fundamentally has been due to the development of the same qualities in the nation.