The conference has evolved two committees, one on disarmament and one on Pacific affairs, which meet behind closed doors, so that one has three or four divergent reports of what has happened to choose from; delegates at all hours and in devious ways call together the press men to make more or less epoch-making statements; there are particular conferences with representative business men of this country and educationists of that, and so forth; one is called upon by a multitude of well informed people insistent upon this fact or that point of view, eloquent sidelights from South China, Albania, Czecho-Slovakia clamor for attention. And there is a terrible multitude of mere pesterers who want to do something—they know not what. The weather here is unusually warm and inclined to be cloudy, a brewhouse atmosphere, due entirely, one humorist declares, to the tremendous fermentation that is going on. The fermenting vat overflows with the press of all the world. All the world, we feel, is present in spirit at Washington. Three questions stand out as of importance and significance. The naval disarmament discussion, as one could have foretold, becomes a haggle for advantages. Each power seeks to disarm the other fellow. Great Britain detests the big raider submarine and wants none of it; it is America’s only effective long range weapon. A clamor comes to us from across the ocean from the French Senate for unlimited submarines. These will be to attack Great Britain; there can be no other possible use for them. Perhaps the French Senate does not really want war with Britain, but this is the way to get it. Japan is asking for a seven to ten instead of a six to ten basis for herself. And so on. So long as unsettled differences remain, disarmament discussions are bound to degenerate in this fashion. Settlements and sincere disarmament are inseparably interwoven. The French, however, have led in an important pronouncement, promising evacuations and renunciations in the Chinese area on the part of France, provided Britain and Japan follow suit. Lord Riddle, on behalf of Britain, has followed suit; Britain is ready to relinquish everything, with the justifiable exception of Hongkong, a purely British creation. And M. Briand has explained why France must have an awful army to overawe Europe, but that still leaves certain possibilities of military restraint open for consideration. We are still discussing whether we may not hope to see conscription banished from the earth. When such things swim up through the boiling activities of the Washington vat, not merely as passing suggestions and happy ideas but embodied in more or less concrete proposals, we cannot fail, however jaded we may feel, from also feeling hopeful. The conference has got only to its third session and we already seem further from war in the Pacific and nearer security there than at any time in the last two years.