404 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Nations, General Lea says, are never stationary — they must neces- 

 sarily expand or shrink, according to their vitality or decrepitude. 

 Japan now is culminating; and by the fatal law in question it is im- 

 possible that her statesmen should not long since have entered, with 

 extraordinary foresight, upon a vast policy of conquest — the game in 

 which the first moves were her wars with China and Eussia and her 

 treaty with England, and of which the final objective is the capture of 

 the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska and the whole of our 

 coast west of the Sierra passes. This will give Japan what her ineluc- 

 table vocation as a state absolutely forces her to claim, the possession of 

 the entire Pacific Ocean; and to oppose these deep designs we Ameri- 

 cans have, according to our author, nothing but our conceit, our igno- 

 rance, our commercialism, our corruption, and our feminism. General 

 Lea makes a minute technical comparison of the military strength 

 which we at present could oppose to the strength of Japan, and 

 concludes that the islands, Alaska, Oregon and southern California, 

 would fall almost without resistance, that San Francisco must 

 surrender in a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three 

 or four months the war would be over, and our republic, unable to re- 

 gain what it had heedlessly neglected to protect sufficiently, would 

 then " disintegrate," until perhaps some Caesar should arise to weld us 

 again into a nation. 



A dismal forecast indeed ! Yet not unplausible, if the mentality of 

 Japan's statesmen be of the Caesarian type of which history shows so 

 many examples, and which is all that General Lea seems able to imag- 

 ine. But there is no reason to think that women can no longer be the 

 mothers of Napoleonic or Alexandrian characters ; and if these come in 

 Japan and find their opportunity, just such surprises as " The Yalor 

 of Ignorance " paints may lurk in ambush for us. Ignorant as we still 

 are of the innermost recesses of Japanese mentality, we may be fool- 

 hardy to disregard such possibilities. 



Other militarists are more complex and more moral in their con- 

 siderations. The " Philosophie des Krieges," by S. E. Steinmetz is a 

 good example. War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted 

 by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the essential form 

 of the state, and the only function in which peoples can employ all 

 their powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible save as 

 the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat for which some vice or 

 weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, 

 conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, physical health 

 and vigor — there isn't a moral or intellectual point of superiority that 

 doesn't tell, when God holds his assizes and hurls the peoples upon one 

 another. Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht; and Dr. Steinmetz 



