amount of typhoid bacilli that would buy, which adroitly sprinkled over the enemy would do far more damage than steel. Why not fill up your cup of damnation, noble warriors? Organize a cholera corps to go die in the foe's camp and spread ruin. Then there is the bubonic plague, there is smallpox, and doubtless enough lepers could be impressed to do effective glorious work for God and the king. Plain lead and gunpowder are decidedly amateurish. Up! Advance! The devil calls you. Use the germ. Let there be no bound to your heinous malignity, that when your day of judgment comes there may be no palliation. And, by the way, why not use the women? They can shoot guns, carry ammunition, and kill generally, and whenever they have had a chance to fight they have been fiercer than males. And children. It is said there are too many of them, anyhow. Why should you stop anywhere in your insane diabolism? You sneer at sentiment. You ruthlessly sacrifice 10,000 lives to gain a strategic advantage. Why do you neglect germs? JAPAN ONE of the favorite themes of the Trouble Makers is "the coming war with Japan." Every once in a while some newspaper, some crazy congressman, or some mischief loving magazine writer expands upon the subject of the Japanese peril. These fomenters of evil are playing with fire. They are utter nuisances, unfortunately unsuppressible in a free government. As we can't chop them down or lock them up, let us do all we can to counteract their dangerous activities. There is no reason on earth why we should contemplate a war with Japan, forever and ever. The claim that Japan wants to pour hordes of immigrants into this country is absolutely false. Japan does not want unlimited colonization here. Japan does not believe in race-mixing any more than we do. The Japanese are as proud of their blood as we are of ours. Neither do the Japanese want unlimited privilege of buying land here. They are willing and anxious to co-operate with us in restricting the entrance of their people among ours, for the common good. What they do want is to be treated decently. They are a self-respecting, sensitive people, and naturally are offended by being dubbed an inferior race. If war ever comes between us it will be brought on by the vicious stupidity of American race-vanity and race-hate. The Japanese government is doing all in its power to keep down anti-American sentiment among its people. The Japan Herald was suppressed because it continued to contain hints of American hostility. The wildest rumors, however, are spread from time to time in Japan, stirring up fear of American aggression. For instance, a profound sensation was created on Aug. 8 last by an extra of the newspaper Koku Min Shimbun, which published a rumor that the United States was about to take advantage of the European situation, and of England's hands being tied so that she could not assist her ally, to send our whole fleet to Japan and "settle matters with her once for all." Our minister there had great difficulty in allaying the indignation caused by this infamous, lying canard. The newspaper or individual that makes bad feeling between nations is no better than the vile slanderer who tells tales to man and wife to disrupt the home. What frightful hell-crop may grow from such sowing! Thousands of lives may have to be sacrificed for the poison ignorance of men who act as wanton, window-smashing urchins. Let us treat our oriental friends with decency and we need never fear them. Let us cease the evil business of "being ready for Japan" by warships, and invite that country to join us rather in beginning the Federation of the World. Let us strive to be the nation, not most feared by Japan, but best beloved by her. Let us treat her with courtesy, consideration, and justice, and we two nations shall march hand in hand toward the goal of universal law and suppression of the folly of international duelling. Tuesday, November 24, 1914. BUT THE WORLD WAS NOT READY CENTURIES ago the Hebrew prophets spoke of the era when men should beat their swords into ploughshares, when war should cease and none should any more hurt or destroy; but the world was not ready. About two thousand years ago the angels broke through the sky and announced "Peace on earth and good-will toward men"; but the world was not ready. When Dante was a boy, Pierre du Bois, a young lawyer of Coutances, in Normandy, proposed a congress of princes which should organize an international court of arbitration; but the world was not ready. Dante presented in his "De Monarchia" the idea of peace through world empire and an international organization; but the world was not ready. In 1624 a Frenchman named Emeric Cruce wrote a book, "The New Cyneas," in which for the first time in the world was developed |