It was President Harding, with Charles Hughes as his Foreign Secretary, who summoned the Conference on Naval Disarmament, and carried it through with triumphant success, due not a little to the hearty co-operation of the British Government through its representative, Lord Balfour. That limitation of naval armaments was really the first step towards world peace, though many steps must follow before peace is secure. It did at least one enormous thing in history. It stopped the possibility of a competition in naval strength between Great Britain and the United States which, if it had happened, would not only have been a crushing burden to the taxpayers but would have led inevitably to suspicion and hostility between our two nations. The agreement of Japan was also a check to a rivalry in naval power which would have produced explosive forces and passions. The agreement did not stop the possibility of naval warfare, but it killed its inevitability. The conclusion of that conference re-inspired the idealists. It encouraged them to further efforts to stimulate public opinion. Mr. Charles Hughes suggested an economic conference in Europe which resulted eighteen months later in the acceptance of the Dawes Report. The women’s clubs, the peace associations, many of the leaders of American thought, became more and more distressed at the state of things in Europe, more and more convinced that only by American participation, at least in moral and economic spheres, could Europe solve its problems on lines of reasonable compromise. AMERICAN SYMPATHY WITH FRANCE