Japan at the present time is in financial difficulties. The existing war has kept tourists from her shores and curtailed her trade, while putting her to large expenses in war preparation. Not one penny of the war debt incurred in the war with Russia has yet been paid. What is holding Japan together to-day is her export of tea and silks to the United States. Millions of her citizens are dependent upon these trades for their livelihood. Japan doesn’t want the Philippines because she has now ample territory more geographically and climatically favorable to her needs, and she is not greatly exercised over the emigration question, because she needs immigrants herself. The government would much rather keep the people at home—besides her naval and military experts are wise enough to know that they would stand little chance in attempting to fight the United States across eight thousand miles of ocean. The talk of war with Germany or England, whichever may be the winner in the European conflict, after that awful contest is finished, is equally pernicious and damnable. There is no reason why we should go to war with either. The United States intends to observe all the obligations of neutrality and so to conduct herself as to win the respect and good will of all the combatants. It would require a supreme act of folly on our part to drive us into war with any European country. So long as we observe our moral obligations we are in no danger of attack. A PREMATURE MOVEMENT During the month of June “A League of Peace” was organized in Philadelphia. The tentative proposals of the originators of the movement, as reported in articles in the daily papers, is to obtain “an agreement from the various nations of the world to submit all differences to adjudication or arbitration, to use their military forces to prevent any one of their number from going to war before all questions in dispute shall have been submitted to an international court or council; and that the powers in the agreement codify rules of international law by which they shall abide.” In order to give the movement an appearance of solid backing a formidable list was published of the names of prominent men who had been invited to the Philadelphia conference. Any careful and intelligent student of the world situation must recognize the fact that an effective agreement of this character among nations is impossible before the conclusion of the great war in Europe and Asia. The most powerful nations of the world are engaged in this Titanic struggle, and it is not supposable that they will enter into an arbitration agreement before the terms of peace are concluded. Any agreement made by any number of nations omitting the now belligerent nations would be futile, for the nations at war command vast armies and navies and stores of war material and military organization against which the now peaceful nations would contend in vain.