The Conference met in circumstances of great tension. M. Briand had found it necessary to placate his Chamber by announcing that he intended to occupy the Ruhr on May 1. The policy of violence and illegality, which began with the Conference of Paris, had always included hitherto just a sufficient ingredient of make–believe to prevent its being as dangerous as it pretended to the peace and prosperity of Europe. But a point had now been reached when something definite, whether good or bad, seemed bound to happen; and there was every reason for anxiety. Mr. Lloyd George and M. Briand had walked hand–in–hand to the edge of a precipice; Mr. Lloyd George had looked over the edge; and M. Briand had praised the beauties of the prospect below and the exhilarating sensations of a descent. Mr. Lloyd George, having indulged to the full his habitual morbid taste for looking over, would certainly end in drawing back, explaining at the same time how much he sympathized with M. Briand’s standpoint. But would M. Briand? In this atmosphere the Conference met, and, considering all the circumstances, including the past commitments of the principals, the result was, on the whole, a victory for good sense, not least because the Allies there decided to return to the pathway of legality within the ambit of the Treaty. The new proposals, concerted at this Conference, were, whether they were practicable or not in execution, a lawful development of the Treaty, and in this respect sharply distinguished from the Decisions of Paris in the January preceding. However bad the Treaty might be, the London scheme provided a way of escape from a policy worse even than that of the Treaty,—acts, that is, of arbitrary lawlessness based on the mere possession of superior force. In one respect the Second Ultimatum of London was lawless; for it included an illegal threat to occupy the Ruhr Valley if Germany refused its terms. But this was for the sake of M. Briand, whose minimum requirement was that he should at least be able to go home in a position to use, for conversational purposes, the charms of the precipice from which he was hurrying away. And the Ultimatum made no demand on Germany to which she was not already committed by her signature to the Treaty.