But these American papers of the hostile sort write of France or Britain as if they were wicked old spiders. They write of Britain as a monster with a crown and an eyeglass and such like concomitants loathsome to all sound democratic instincts. They write of the “designs” of France and Italy and Britain as if these horrid monsters were all playing a fearsome game with each other for the soul and body of America. It is easy enough then to clamor for repayments of war debts. It is easy then to excite people by a clamor for a war bonus for the veterans of the Great War to be saddled upon the European debtor. But let me remind the American soldier that the real European debtor, the fellow on whom it will fall, the fellow who will have to toil and pay and want, if you can realize that dream of pitiless exaction, is no legendary monster France or Britain; it is that other fellow over there you fought beside, it is the wounded man in blue or khaki you passed by as you went into action, it is the man who smiled his courage at you as you blundered against him in the din and confusion of battle. If you listen to these stay-at-home patriots and these exotic advisers of yours, it is he who will pay, he and his wife and his child; they will all pay in toil and privation and worry and stunted lives. It is they who will pay—but you will not receive. You too will pay in disorganized business, in restricted production, in underemployment. You will get nothing else out of it except whatever satisfaction you may feel in having made those other fellows over there in Europe pay—and pay bitterly. XXVIII THE FOUNDATION STONE AND THE BUILDING Washington, Dec. 14. Beginning with the fourth plenary session of the Washington Conference, the registration of “results” in the Pacific, in disarmament, in China, has begun. They are good results, assembled on a basis of broad principles, that may sustain at last an organized permanent peace for the whole world. If there is one thing to be noted more than another about the work that has led up to this settlement it is the adaptability, the intelligent and sympathetic understanding shown by Japan in these transactions. The Japanese seem to be the most flexible minded of peoples. They win my respect more and more.