Again, these peace people have persistently and resolutely blinked facts. One of the peace congresses sat in New York at the very time that the feeling in California about the Japanese question gravely threatened the good relations between ourselves and the great empire of Japan. The only thing which at the moment could practically be done for the cause of peace was to secure some proper solution of the question at issue between ourselves and Japan. But this represented real effort, real thought. The peace congress paid not the slightest serious attention to the matter and instead devoted itself to listening to speeches which favored the abolition of the United States navy and even in one case the prohibiting the use of tin soldiers in nurseries because of the militaristic effect on the minds of the little boys and girls who played with them! Ex-President Taft has recently said that it is hysterical to endeavor to prepare against war; and he at the same time explained that the only real possibility of war was to be found “in the wanton, reckless, wicked willingness on the part of a narrow section of the country to gratify racial prejudice and class hatred by flagrant breach of treaty right in the form of state law.” This characterization is, of course, aimed at the State of California for its action toward the Japanese. If--which may Heaven forfend--any trouble comes because of the action of California toward the Japanese, a prime factor in producing it will be the treaty negotiated four years ago with Japan; and no clearer illustration can be given of the mischief that comes to our people from the habit our public men have contracted of getting cheap applause for themselves by making treaties which they know to be shams, which they know cannot be observed. The result of such action is that there is one set of real facts, those that actually exist and must be reckoned with, and another set of make-believe facts which do not exist except on pieces of paper or in after-dinner speeches, which are known to be false but which serve to deceive well-meaning pacificists. Four years ago there was in existence a long-standing treaty with Japan under which we reserved the right to keep out Japanese laborers. Every man of any knowledge whatever of conditions on the Pacific Slope, and, indeed, generally throughout this country, knew, and knows now, that any immigration in mass to this country of the Japanese, whether the immigrants be industrial laborers or men whose labor takes the form of agricultural work or even the form of small shopkeeping, was and is absolutely certain to produce trouble of the most dangerous kind. The then administration entered on a course of conduct as regards Manchuria which not only deeply offended the Japanese but actually achieved the result of uniting the Russians and Japanese against us. To make amends for this serious blunder the administration committed the far worse