If I were a Japanese journalist looking for notoriety, I should translate sections from Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Richmond P. Hobson, _et al._, and publish them under the title “America and the Next War.” There is no question that these gentlemen put together are ten times as influential in the United States as von Bernhardi was in Germany. And there is no question that their utterances are just as inciting to militarism. If to them were added editorials from the Hearst newspapers, with their millions of circulation, and the books of certain prominent army officers, no one could convince the Japanese that the United States is not a conceited, hot-headed, and militarist nation. After the outbreak of a war we should plead in vain that we are peace-loving and fight only in self-defence. “Have you not the second largest navy in the world?” the Japanese would say. “Was any nation threatening you? Did you not capture the Philippines by force and subdue them against their will, practicing against the innocent natives horrible atrocities? Would you not do the same to Japan if you had the chance? Fortunately we are forewarned, and seize a favorable occasion to free the Philippines, since you have broken your promise to give them independence.” And we should feel that the Japanese were monsters hiding their aggressive spirit under humanitarian humbug. Most of us have forgotten the spasm of “divine mission” that swept over this country at the time of the Spanish-American war. We were appointed by God to conquer or absorb the world, and bestow upon it, willing or unwilling, our American _Kultur_. “Civilization” was, indeed, the precise word we used, although we sometimes varied it with “free institutions.” At the same time the beef trust was furnishing “embalmed beef” to the army, and our economic system was at its very depth of unsavoriness. The Spanish papers cartooned us, quite justly, as “the American hog,” and the cartoons were reproduced broadcast over this country to feed the fires of hate. A Spaniard became to us the very impersonation of demoniacal cruelty. The country ran high with the spy fever, while the Atlantic coast waited in some trepidation for the imagined approach of Cervera’s squadron. We were prey to all the grinning illusions of war.