We, a people akin to and yet different from all the peoples of Europe, should be equally friendly to all these peoples while they behave well, should be courteous to and considerate of the rights of each of them, but should not hesitate to judge each and all of them by their conduct. The kind of “neutrality” which seeks to preserve “peace” by timidly refusing to live up to our plighted word and to denounce and take action against such wrong as that committed in the case of Belgium, is unworthy of an honorable and powerful people. Dante reserved a special place of infamy in the inferno for those base angels who dared side neither with evil nor with good. Peace is ardently to be desired, but only as the handmaid of righteousness. The only peace of permanent value is the peace of righteousness. There can be no such peace until well-behaved, highly civilized small nations are protected from oppression and subjugation. National promises, made in treaties, in Hague conventions, and the like are like the promises of individuals. The sole value of the promise comes in the performance. Recklessness in making promises is in practice almost or quite as mischievous and dishonest as indifference to keeping promises; and this as much in the case of nations as in the case of individuals. Upright men make few promises, and keep those they make. All the actions of the ultrapacificists for a generation past, all their peace congresses and peace conventions, have amounted to precisely and exactly nothing in advancing the cause of peace. The peace societies of the ordinary pacificist type have in the aggregate failed to accomplish even the smallest amount of good, have done nothing whatever for peace, and the very small effect they have had on their own nations has been, on the whole, slightly detrimental. Although usually they have been too futile to be even detrimental, their unfortunate tendency has so far been to make good men weak and to make virtue a matter of derision to strong men. All-inclusive arbitration treaties of the kind hitherto proposed and enacted are utterly worthless, are hostile to righteousness and detrimental to peace. The Americans, within and without Congress, who have opposed the fortifying of the Panama Canal and the upbuilding of the American navy have been false to the honor and the interest of the nation and should be condemned by every high-minded citizen. In every serious crisis the present Hague conventions and the peace and arbitration and neutrality treaties of the existing type have proved not to be worth the paper on which they were written. This is because no method was provided of securing their enforcement, of putting force behind the pledge. Peace treaties and arbitration treaties unbacked by force are not merely useless but mischievous in any serious crisis.