These are ebb tide phenomena. These are the limitations of our poor humanity under fatigue. None the less, matters have to be thrashed out and will be thrashed out. As I said in the beginning, it is hard to keep hold. And so it was high time that the President, who embodies so much of the simplicity and strength of that real America, in which I am a profound and obstinate believer, should come back into the limelight from which he receded after delivering his great speech and leaving the chair on the opening day of the conference. In the indirect way customary with Presidents here he has been making some very important pronouncements. My friend Mr. Michelson some days ago published a sketch of very important proposals that had already received wide support in the informal discussions that pervade Washington—for partial rescinding of the Allied debts, subject to disarmament conditions, to be considered by a second conference to be presently assembled. Following on this news the President has been talking for publication of a third experiment in the form of a second Washington Conference to take up these issues. And he has also been talking of a third conference to confirm and go on with the disarmament arrangements, a conference at which Germany and the Spanish-speaking powers, if not Russia, are apparently to have a voice. Such a periodic repetition of the conference would presently organize itself for a continuing life and so develop gradually and naturally into that Association of Nations we are all seeking. These are refreshing promises in these days of ebb; they show that the impulse that began so splendidly two weeks ago is not dead, that the tide rises toward world discussion and world organized peace will flow again presently, wider and stronger than its previous flow. And meanwhile these frank discussions of attitude and detail must go on; they cannot be ignored, but at the same time they must not be magnified into incurable quarrels and insurmountable difficulties. They are unavoidable and necessary things, but not the big things, the main things. While the tide is out our main projects, stranded in this estuary that leads perhaps to the ocean of peace, must needs keel over and look askew; we must scrape our keels, calk leaks and wait for the great waters to return. XVIII AMERICA AND ENTANGLING ALLIANCES Washington, Nov. 30. The power of the American impulse toward a world peace is undeniable. It has produced in succession the great dream of a League of Nations and now this second great dream of a gradually developing Association of Nations arising out of a series of such conferences as this one. No other nation could have raised such hopes and no other political system has the freedom of action needed to give these projects the substance and dignity which the initiative of the head of the state involves.