whether in private or public life; but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary.  No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.  No nation deserves to exist if it permits itself to lose the stern and virile virtues; and this without regard to whether the loss is due to the growth of a heartless and all-absorbing commercialism, to prolonged indulgence in luxury and soft effortless ease, or to the deification of a warped and twisted sentimentality.

Moreover, and above all, let us remember that words count only when they give expression to deeds or are to be translated into them.  The leaders of the Red Terror prattled of peace while they steeped their hands in the blood of the innocent; and many a tyrant has called it peace when he has scourged honest protest into silence.  Our words must be judged by our deeds; and in striving for a lofty ideal we must use practical methods; and if we cannot attain all at one leap, we must advance towards it step by step, reasonably content so long as we do actually make some progress in the right direction.

Now, having freely admitted the limitations to our work, and the qualifications to be borne in mind, I feel that I have the right to have my words taken seriously when I point out where, in my judgment, great advance can be made in the cause of international peace.  I speak as a practical man, and whatever I now advocate I actually tried to do when I was for the time being the head of a great nation, and keenly jealous of its honor and interest.  I ask other nations to do only what I should be glad to see my own nation do.

The advance can be made along several lines.  First of all, there can be treaties of arbitration.  There are, of course, states so backward that a civilized community ought not to enter into an arbitration treaty with them, at least until we have gone much further than at present in securing some kind of international police action.  But all really civilized communities should have effective arbitration treaties among themselves.  I believe that these treaties can cover almost all questions liable to arise between such nations, if they are drawn with the explicit agreement that each contracting party will respect the other’s territory and its absolute sovereignty within that territory, and the equally explicit agreement that (aside from the very rare cases where the nation’s honor is vitally concerned) all other possible subjects of controversy will be submitted to arbitration.  Such a treaty would insure peace unless one party deliberately violated it.  Of course, as yet there is no adequate safeguard against such deliberate violation, but the establishment of a sufficient number of these treaties would go a long way towards creating a world opinion which would finally find expression in the provision of methods to forbid or punish any such violation.