blunder of endeavoring to placate Japanese opinion by the negotiation of a new treaty in which our right to exclude Japanese laborers, that is, to prevent Japanese immigration in mass, was abandoned. The extraordinary and lamentable fact in the matter was that the California senators acquiesced in the treaty. Apparently they took the view, which so many of our public men do take and which they are encouraged to take by the unwisdom of those who demand impossible treaties, that they were perfectly willing to please some people by passing the treaty because, if necessary, the opponents of the treaty could at any time be placated by its violation. One item in securing their support was the statement by the then administration that the Japanese authorities had said that they would promise under a “gentlemen’s agreement” to keep the immigrants out if only they were by treaty given the right to let them in. Under the preceding treaty, during my administration, the Japanese government had made and had in good faith kept such an agreement, the agreement being that as long as the Japanese government itself kept out Japanese immigrants and thereby relieved us of the necessity of passing any law to exclude them, no such law would be passed. Apparently the next administration did not perceive the fathomless difference between retaining the power to enact a law which was not enacted as long as no necessity for enacting it arose, and abandoning the power, surrendering the right, and trusting that the necessity to exercise it would not arise.