The attempt to limit by treaty the use of the submarine and to prohibit altogether the use of gases appears to many to be utterly futile. After the experience of the late war, no nation would readily trust the good faith of another in these matters. Each party to a war would probably feel justified in being prepared to use the submarine and poison gases, contrary to law, in case the other party should do so. We would thus have the same old dispute as in the late war in regard to floating mines as to which party first resorted to the outlawed practice. What is the use in solemnly declaring that a submarine shall not attack a merchant vessel, and that the commander of a submarine who violates this law shall be treated as a pirate, when the contracting parties found it utterly impossible to agree among themselves upon a definition of a merchant vessel? But the reader may ask, what is the use in signing any treaty if nations are so devoid of good faith? The answer is that the vast majority of treaties are faithfully kept in time of peace, but that very few treaties are fully observed in time of war. Had these five powers signed a treaty pledging themselves not to build or maintain submarines of any kind or description, we would have every reason to expect them to live up to it. But when a nation is engaged in war and has a large flotilla of submarines which it has agreed to use only for certain purposes, there is apt to come a time when the temptation to use them for wholly different purposes will be overwhelming. The Committee on Pacific and Far Eastern Questions held its first meeting November 16. This committee was primarily concerned with the very delicate situation created by the aggressive action and expansion of Japan during the past twenty years. In 1905, by the Treaty of Portsmouth, Japan succeeded to the Russian rights in southern Manchuria; in 1910 she annexed Korea; in 1911, during the Chinese Revolution, she stationed troops at Hankow and later constructed permanent barracks; in 1914, after the defeat of the Germans at Kiao-chau, she took over all the German interests in the Shantung peninsula; in 1915 she presented the Twenty-one Demands to China and coerced that power into granting most of them; and in 1918, in conjunction with the United States, Great Britain, and France, she landed a military force in the Maritime Province of Siberia for the definite purpose of rescuing the Czecho-Slovak troops who had made their way to that province and of guarding the military stores at Vladivostok. The other powers had all withdrawn their contingents, but Japan had increased her force from one division to more than 70,000 troops. The eastern coast of Asia was thus in the firm grip of Japan, and she had secured concessions from China which seriously impaired the independence of that country.