Recently, there have been negotiated in Washington thirty or forty little all-inclusive arbitration or so-called “peace” treaties, which represent as high a degree of fatuity as is often achieved in these matters. There is no likelihood that they will do us any great material harm because it is absolutely certain that we would not pay the smallest attention to them in the event of their being invoked in any matter where our interests were seriously involved; but it would do us moral harm to break them, even although this were the least evil of two evil alternatives. It is a discreditable thing that at this very moment, with before our eyes such proof of the worthlessness of the neutrality treaties affecting Belgium and Luxembourg, our nation should be negotiating treaties which convince every sensible and well-informed observer abroad that we are either utterly heedless in making promises which cannot be kept or else willing to make promises which we have no intention of keeping. What has just happened shows that such treaties are worthless except to the degree that force can and will be used in backing them. There are some well-meaning people, misled by mere words, who doubtless think that treaties of this kind do accomplish something. These good and well-meaning people may feel that I am not zealous in the cause of peace. This is the direct reverse of the truth. I abhor war. In common with all other thinking men I am inexpressibly saddened by the dreadful contest now waging in Europe. I put peace very high as an agent for bringing about righteousness. But if I must choose between righteousness and peace I choose righteousness. Therefore, I hold myself in honor bound to do anything in my power to advance the cause of the peace of righteousness throughout the world. I believe we can make substantial advances by international agreement in the line of achieving this purpose and in this book I state in outline just what I think can be done toward this end. But I hold that we will do nothing and less than nothing unless, pending the accomplishment of this purpose, we keep our own beloved country in such shape that war shall not strike her down; and, furthermore, unless we also seriously consider what the defects have been in the existing peace, neutrality, and arbitration treaties and in the attitude hitherto assumed by the professional pacificists, which have rendered these treaties such feeble aids to peace and the ultrapacificist attitude a positive obstacle to peace.