The conference had also to its credit the diminishing, if not the removal, of causes for conflicts among the powers in the Far East. For a time, at least, there would be no more loose talk of the inevitable war between the United States and Japan, and the suspicion and discord resulting from the Anglo-Japanese treaty improved the relations between the United States and Great Britain, between Great Britain and her self-governing dominions, and between Great Britain and China. The subsequent withdrawal of Japan from Shantung indicated how the Washington Conference had made possible the fulfilment of Japan’s promise to President Wilson. On the other hand, the character of the decisions made at the Washington Conference was in no way harmful to the interests of Russia, and will not be upset when Russia becomes once more a factor in Far Eastern affairs. The non-participation of Russia, therefore, does not vitiate the work of the Washington Conference in the same way as the exclusion of Russia from the deliberations of the Lausanne Conference threatens to make ineffective its decisions as to the Straits and other Near Eastern problems. From the success of the initiative of the American Government in the autumn of 1921, however, it is unsafe to draw the analogy that we should have been equally successful had we made the same proposal that the powers come together in our far-off and virtually neutral capital to make a similar beginning in solving the imperative problem of limitation of land armaments of European nations. We had a stake at Washington which we do not have in Europe. We had vital interests to safeguard which we do not have in Europe. We had means of bringing pressure to bear upon the participating powers which we would not possess in a land disarmament conference. At Washington we gained equality of sea-power with the greatest naval nation without having to pay heavily for it. No balance of power question or any other subject of international politics in Europe affects our interests in the way the balance of power in the Pacific and the amelioration of China’s international position do. At Washington we had the trump argument that if competition in naval armaments was not stopped we should be compelled to become the predominant naval power.