In such towns I have myself more than once seen well-meaning but foolish citizens endeavor to meet the exigencies of the case by simply passing resolutions of disarmament without any power back of them. That is, they passed self-denying ordinances, saying that nobody was to carry arms; but they failed to provide methods for carrying such ordinances into effect. In every case the result was the same. Good citizens for the moment abandoned their weapons. The bad men continued to carry them. Things grew worse instead of better; and then the good men came to their senses and clothed some representative of the police with power to employ force, potential or existing, against the wrong-doers. Affairs in the international world are at this time in analogous condition. There is no central police power, and not the least likelihood of its being created. Well-meaning enthusiasts have tried their hands to an almost unlimited extent in the way of devising all-inclusive arbitration treaties, neutrality treaties, disarmament proposals, and the like, with no force back of them, and the result has been stupendous and discreditable failure. Preparedness for war on the part of individual nations has sometimes but not always averted war. Unpreparedness for war, as in the case of China, Korea, and Luxembourg, has invariably invited smashing disaster, and sometimes complete conquest. Surely these conditions should teach a lesson that any man who runs may read unless his eyes have been blinded by folly or his heart weakened by cowardice. The immediately vital lesson for each individual nation is that as things are now it must in time of crisis rely on its own stout hearts and ready hands for self-defense. Existing treaties are utterly worthless so far as concerns protecting any free, well-behaved people from one of the great aggressive military monarchies of the world. The all-inclusive arbitration treaties such as those recently negotiated by Messrs. Wilson and Bryan, when taken in connection with our refusal to act under existing treaties, represent about the highest point of slightly mischievous fatuity which can be attained in international matters. Inasmuch as we ourselves are the power that initiated their negotiation, we can do our plain duty to ourselves and our neighbors only by ourselves proceeding from the outset on the theory, and by warning our neighbors, that these treaties in any time of crisis will certainly not be respected by any serious adversary, and probably will of necessity be violated by ourselves. They do not in even the very smallest degree relieve us of the necessity of preparedness for war. To this point of our duty to be prepared I will return later.