In the face of the universal hopefulness for satisfactory results from the conference I find myself full of doubts. The naval disarmament proposal of Secretary Hughes was obviously meant only as the opening proposition, the quite splendid opening proposition, of the conference. The second meeting, I felt, would find Mr. Balfour and Admiral Kato and M. Briand in eloquent sympathy, saying: “Certainly. All this and more also we can do on the understanding that a stable, explicit, exhaustive, permanent Pacific agreement can be framed by this conference that will remove all causes of war whatever.” But the second meeting was disappointing. One nation after another agreed, as Mr. Balfour, that “old parliamentary hand,” put it, “in principle. But”——And now we are all playing four-handed chess with reservations about dockyards, naval stations, cruisers, large submarines, and the like. We are all trying to put the effective disarmament onto the other fellow. Meanwhile the nine powers are sitting in secret session on the Pacific question, and it is clear from the rumors that nine-handed chess is in progress there. Yet the fact, plain enough to any one who is not lost in the game of diplomacy, is that this conference is an occasion for generosity and renunciation. There is no way out of the Pacific imbroglio except to disentangle China and form a self-denying ordinance of all the powers concerned to leave her alone while she reconstructs. I submit that even Japan, most intent of all the chess players, will do best to fall in line with such a plan. Would a world covenant to protect China from aggression and to concede her the progressive abolition of extra-territorial privileges and the same unlimited rights over her own railways and soil and revenue that are enjoyed by the Americans and Japanese over theirs be any serious harm to Japan? Would it not release Japan from her imitative career as a pseudo-Britain or a pseudo-Germany and enable her to get on with her own proper business, which is to be, to the fullest, completest and richest extent, Japan?