CRIMINAL WAR TALK
Among the most insidious and reckless foes to peace are those who are constantly predicting wars between the United States and other nations. At the present time there is absolutely no reason why the United States should go to war with any nation on earth. The favorite pastime of some alarmists for several years past has been to predict war between this country and Japan. Nobody can show any reason why we should attack Japan, and all the evidence and all the signs of the times go to show that Japan has not the least intention of attacking us.
A Minneapolis journalist who recently returned from a six months’ stay in the Orient, and who was present with the Japanese at the siege of Tsing-tao, gives some cogent reasons why Japan will not seek war with the United States, despite some disputes over the immigration question and possibly in regard to the open door in China.
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.