The precedent that may be established through the conference is the liberation of China, when China is militarily impotent and politically disordered, not only from fresh foreign aggression but from existing foreign domination. The establishment of such a precedent is a thing of supreme importance to all men. If the conference does not get so far as that—so far as to establish the principle that an Asiatic people has a right to control its own destinies and to protection while it adjusts these destinies, in spite of the fact that it cannot as an efficient power defend that right—it will have made a very wide step indeed not only toward world peace but toward a general liberation of Asiatic peoples held in tutelage. It is so important to mankind that that step should be made that I grudge any diversion of energy to minor injustices, however glaring, or any complication of the issue whatever. So far as the conference goes, I am convinced that “Stick to the freedom of China” is the watchword for all liberal thinkers. By the extent to which China is liberated and secured the conference will have to be judged. Even the vast problem of India cannot overshadow that issue. XXIII INDIA, THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND THE ASSOCIATION OF NATIONS Washington, Dec. 7. It is difficult to think of any subject more completely out of the agenda of the Washington Conference than the future of India. But none demands our attention more urgently, if we are to build up anything like a working conception of an Association of Nations. Some days ago Senator Johnson declared he had received assurances from President Harding that no further steps toward a definite organization of an Association of Nations were to be taken for the present; but these assurances will not hinder the drift of thoughts and events toward such a developing system of understandings as must at last, in fact if not in name, constitute a World Association. Indeed, the less we try to fix such a thing at present, and the more we think it out, the more probable and safe is its coming. Let the President go on, therefore, taking no steps directly toward his Association but proceeding, as he must do very soon, with some sort of international conference upon the economic disorders of the world, and also with the creation of some arrangement, permanent understanding or whatever other name may be given to that commission which is inevitable if the peace of the Pacific is to be made secure. Let us who are dealers in the flimsier preparatory stuff of ideas and public opinion get on with our discussion of the wider stabilizing understanding that looms behind.