Their linguistic isolation is likely to prove unfortunate for the French. The Belgian, the Dutch, the Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese delegations all speak in English and listen to the English speeches. Consequently, the French are in a position in which they seem to be the most foreign people present. This must be disconcerting to them now. It will be much more disconcerting if, at a later stage, German delegates speaking English should appear upon some extension or side committee of the conference. But I do not see how it can be avoided. The French are a little out of touch in the conference because of this; they must be much more out of touch with the incessant conversation in clubs and at dinner tables and everywhere in Washington, which makes the atmosphere in which the conference is working. This, however, is a note by the way. Secretary Hughes took the chair and delivered his address. It was a very carefully arranged surprise and its effect was really dramatical. It jumped the conference abruptly from the fine generalizations that had hitherto engaged it to immediately practical things. Secretary Hughes sketched out what was evidently a carefully worked out scheme, a most explicit scheme, for the complete cessation of naval armament competition. America wanted at the very outset, he said, to convince the world that she meant business in the conference, and so she had taken this unexpected step of putting immediate practical proposals upon the table. She would scrap completely all the ships she had still under construction and all her older ships and she would discontinue all naval construction for ten years if Britain and Japan would do the same. She proposed that the naval strength of the three powers concerned should remain for ten years in the ratio of: Britain, 22; America, 18, and Japan, 10. In other words, she proposed so to fix things that no two of these three powers can wage a conclusive naval war against each other, but with America and Britain in a position to do so jointly against Japan and with Japan at a great disadvantage against America, even if she were to risk an inconclusive war with America on the chance of Britain’s not coming in. And having unfolded this scheme, Secretary Hughes concluded. We were a little stunned. We had expected the opening meeting to be preliminary, to stick to generalities. After Secretary Hughes had finished, there was a feeling that we wanted to go away and think. But the members of the House of Representatives were enjoying an unwonted sense of being in the gallery, quite irresponsibly in the gallery, with somebody else upon the floor. They burst in upon our statesmanlike thoughts below with loud cries for “Briand!” The atmosphere of friendly festival was reestablished. M. Briand spoke eloquently—saying nothing whatever about the proposals of Secretary Hughes—and sat down, and his still quite abstract praises of peace were translated into English.