The next lesson we should learn is of far more immediate consequence to us than speculations about peace in the abstract. Our people should wake up to the fact that it is a poor thing to live in a fool’s paradise. What has occurred in this war ought to bring home to everybody what has of course long been known to all really well-informed men who were willing to face the truth and not try to dodge it. Until some method is devised of putting effective force behind arbitration and neutrality treaties neither these treaties nor the vague and elastic body of custom which is misleadingly termed international law will have any real effect in any serious crisis between us and any save perhaps one or two of the great powers. The average great military power looks at these matters purely from the standpoint of its own interests. Several months ago, for instance, Japan declared war on Germany. She has paid scrupulous regard to our own rights and feelings in the matter. The contention that she is acting in a spirit of mere disinterested altruism need not be considered. She believes that she has wrongs to redress and strong national interests to preserve. Nineteen years ago Germany joined with Russia to check Japan’s progress after her victorious war with China, and has since then itself built up a German colonial possession on Chinese soil. Doubtless the Japanese have never for one moment forgotten this act of Germany. Doubtless they also regard the presence of a strong European military power in China so near to Korea and Manchuria as a menace to Japan’s national life. With businesslike coolness the soldierly statesmen of Nippon have taken the chance which offered itself of at little cost retaliating for the injury inflicted upon them in the past and removing an obstacle to their future dominance in eastern Asia. Korea is absolutely Japan’s. To be sure, by treaty it was solemnly covenanted that Korea should remain independent. But Korea was itself helpless to enforce the treaty, and it was out of the question to suppose that any other nation with no interest of its own at stake would attempt to do for the Koreans what they were utterly unable to do for themselves. Moreover, the treaty rested on the false assumption that Korea could govern herself well. It had already been shown that she could not in any real sense govern herself at all. Japan could not afford to see Korea in the hands of a great foreign power. She regarded her duty to her children and her children’s children as overriding her treaty obligations. Therefore, when Japan thought the right time had come, it calmly tore up the treaty and took Korea, with the polite and businesslike efficiency it had already shown in dealing with Russia, and was afterward to show in dealing with Germany. The treaty, when tested, proved as utterly worthless as our own recent all-inclusive arbitration treaties--and worthlessness can go no further.